In numerous cases, the longevity of world leaders has been the focus of debate. This is what happened with the former American president in his reelection bid. The current president of the United States, Donald Trump, who is 79 years old, is not much younger. By comparison, Vladimir Putin, who is still reluctant to rise from the presidential chair in Russia, turned 73 earlier this month.
Missing from this list, however, is the name of the one who has just been re-elected as president of Cameroon, who At 92 years old he is the oldest head of state of the world. , was declared this Monday as the winner of the elections held on October 12.
Biya,que achieved his eighth term, obtained 53.66% of the votesannounced the president of the Constitutional Council, Clément Atangana, during the official proclamation held at the Congress Palace in Yaoundé, the capital. “Candidate Biya Paul is hereby proclaimed president-elect,” Atangana said.
The announcement comes a day after four people were killed and several members of the security forces were injured in Douala, the country’s economic capital, during protests led by opposition supporters demanding credible election results. The protesters, who claimed that the former minister and opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma Bakary—who declared himself the winner two days after the elections and finally obtained 35.19% of the votes—had defeated the veteran president at the polls, They accused the authorities of preparing an electoral fraudl.
The president was able to appear again after a controversial constitutional reform passed in 2008 that eliminated the presidential term limit. Thus, he competed with eleven other candidates in elections marked, however, by the absence of Biya’s main rival, the opposition leader Maurice Kamto, whose candidacy was rejected by the electoral commission (ELECAM).
Biya, who will rule Cameroon for another seven years, is currently the world’s oldest president. After almost 43 years in charge of the country, however, He is still not the president who has been in power the longest in the world. That mark corresponds to his counterpart from Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, 83 years old, who came to power on August 3, 1979, when he overthrew his uncle Francisco Macías in a coup d’état.
Cameroon has had only two heads of state since its independence and Biya, who is one of the country’s richest men, is the only one that most Cameroonians – under the age of 25 – have known to date.
