Is Yang Scheming To Be Maintained PM?

Prime Minister Philemon Yang, on December 9, hosted and chaired a meeting, with main agenda of asking Northwest CPDM elite to ask Biya to maintain him as PM.

The Post garnered that participants at the meeting included all Northwest members of Government like Paul Atanga Nji, Northwest CPDM Senators and Members of the National Assembly who were all in Yaounde for the November-December session of Parliament, members of the Coordination team of Northwest CPDM like Dr. Bernard Nwana, as well as prominent Yaounde and Northwest-based CPDM elite like Jones Shey Yembe of CEMAC, and John B. Ndeh of MIDENO.

However, not all those who were invited to the meeting bothered to show up. The Post leant that most of those who failed to honour their invitation were mostly Northwest CPDM elite who are of the private sector, like contractors.

They are said to be grumbling that PM Yang only invites them to meetings to make financial contributions, but that his presence at the Star Building has not been of any benefit to their businesses.

Real Agenda Kept Secret

A reliable source that attended the meeting told The Post that the real agenda of the December 9 meeting was not known to many of the Northwest CPDM elite who were invited, but for a few.The Post gathered that the real agenda of the meeting was to rally the support of Northwest CPDM elite, to beg President Biya to maintain Yang as Prime Minister.

All Northwest members of Government, including those who have not been agreeing with Yang out of personal interest, want Biya to maintain him in the post of Prime Minister, with the hope that Biya will also maintain them in Government.

The December 9 meeting held within a backdrop of a strong rumour, especially in the nation’s capital, Yaounde, that Biya is about to shakeup his cabinet and that almost all the Anglophones in the current Government, including the Yang, will be fired over their failure to handle the Anglophone Crisis.

Also, many Francophone media organs have, in recent times, been calling on Biya to fire all the Anglophones in Government, insisting that they have, in the face of the ongoing Anglophone Crisis, shown beyond doubts that they do not represent the Anglophone population.

Even in the popular Sunday debates over some major private TV stations, an increasing number of Francophone elite have, in the last couple of weeks, been mincing no words to call on President Biya to flush out the current  Anglophone (CPDM) elite in Yaounde, for  the Anglophone Crisis has shown that they represent nobody.

Resolutions Sent To Biya

The Post learnt that the December 9 meeting addresseda number of resolutions to President Biya both in his capacity as National President of the CPDM and Head of State, urging him to maintain Yang in the post of PM.

As regards the escalating Anglophone Crisis, the Northwest CPDM elite desperately tried to convince President Biya that Northwest elite under Yang’s coordination have not been relenting efforts to contain the situation.

The Northwest CPDM elite expressed the wish to see PM Yang be Biya’s  National Campaign Manager in the 2018 Presidential Election, as was the case in the last Presidential  Election in  2011.

The Post as well learnt that most of the participants at the December 9 meeting did not know the real content of the resolutions to Biya, but the attendance sheet was attached to give the impression that all those who participated at the meeting adopted the resolutions.

Belinga and Nkuete

No sooner did the meeting end, than some Yang’s men hurriedly deposited copies of the resolutions with  the Chief of Cabinet at the Presidency, Martin Belinga Eboutou, and the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the CPDM, Jean Nkuete.

Both personalities were expected to transmit the document to President Biya in his capacity as President of the Republic and National President of the CPDM, respectively.

Meantime, on that December 9, Biya was preparing to leave for Paris, France, on December 11 for the Climate Change Conference. Hence a copy of the resolutions had to be hurriedly taken to the Chief of Cabinet at the Presidency who had to accompany the Head of State, so that he could, along the line, hand it to the President.

Longest Serving PM

Today, is the longest serving Prime Minister in the history of Cameroon. Appointed PM on June 30, 2009, Yang has survived the cabinet shakeup of December 9, 2011 and the one on October 2, 2015.  Yang has, thus, held the post of Prime Minister for over eight years.

President Biya is said to have kept Yang as Prime Minister for this long, because of his unequivocal obedience.

However, Yang’s critics rate his record as Prime Minister negatively. Not only has Yang, as an Anglophone been unable to resolve the Anglophone Crisis that is instead escalating, but the country is also currently in bad socio-economic situation.

There is social tension in different sectors across the country, and Cameroon is once more facing a difficult economic situation that has forced the Government to go back, cap in hand, to the Breton Woods institutions to borrow money. All these do not constitute a good record for a Prime Minister and Head of Government.

The Post Newspaper