Succession: Finally, Paul Biya Chooses His Dolphin!
The race for the succession of Paul Biya in Etoudi is opened with his lot of revelations. After the sidelining of some competitors like former transport minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo'o, the list of candidates in Etoudi narrows.
If the person concerned (Paul Biya) does not comment on the subject, several of his close collaborators are already sharpening their weapons. This is the case of the all-powerful Justice Minister Laurent Esso.According to the revelations of the newspaper Jeune Afrique, Laurent Esso is very interested by the supreme magistracy. Having spent dozens of years alongside Paul Biya, the Minister of Justice, who has been seen several times in the corridors of Etoudi, has created his small world on which he intends to rely to access the function supreme.
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| Succession: Finally, Paul Biya Chooses His Dolphin! |
Since 1982, the irremovable Laurent Esso evolves in the aisles of power, still under the wing of Paul 8iya. And from protected to potential heir, there is often only one step.
Laurent Esso is not afraid of anything. The nights of this pillar of Paul Biya's regime are not troubled by the specter of ministerial reshuffles. At 75, of whom twenty-eight have been in the government, he has seen others. On March 2, one of these earthquakes announced the exit of the government and the descent into hell of those fired. But this time again Esso retained his title of Minister of State while being maintained at the head of the Department of Justice.
It remains the great accuser of Operation Sparrowhawk with this end of March a new campaign of arrests. The burning issue of the hour: the former Minister of Water, Basile Atangina Kouna just thanked, was arrested on March 22 in Nigeria and sent back to Yaoundé manu militari where he must be presented to a judge of the Special Criminal Court . This close to the ambitious Minister of Transport.
Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo'o also fired on March 2 is not the only one to keep the judges investigating. A list of illustrious litigants circulates in high places. And from Douala to Yaoundé, we will still accuse Esso of trying to eliminate or weaken his potential or proven rivals in the race to succeed Paul Biya. It's a paradox. One of the veterans of the power galaxy is also the least known. Oh, we noticed that he let himself grow a mustache salt and pepper - a coquetry no doubt intended to better bring out an authority and courage hidden behind the plump features.
His eyes, however, never smile and comfort his detractors who all describe a character hard and cold. The senator of the French from abroad, Jean-Yves Leconte met him several times when he tried to free the French-Cameroonian lawyer Lydienne Yen Eyoum. "I felt it exactly as it is described." he confirms.
But who really knows this secret man? One thing is clear: he is made of the same wood as his mentor, President Paul Biya. Two misanthropic, hypno-narcissists, of remarkable discretion, magnifying power away from light.
Like the head of state, Esso is not very worldly. A judge claims to have seen him dance on March 8 on a tube of urban music after a meal offered to magistrates of Yaoundé, as is traditional on the International Day of Women's Rights ... But the name of Laurent Esso n has never been associated with government revelers - astonishing for a Sawa, the Bantu group from the Cameroonian coast where he is from and who is famous for his taste of the holiday.
Legal rigidity
Like Biya, Esso is not a tribune. He is a bureaucrat not at his ease in politics, unable to soften the legal rigidity he has inherited from his training as a magistrate. The outbreak of the Anglophone crisis is the most recent example. This was at the origin, a movement of mood of the lawyers to which the Keeper of the Seals could not answer. Lawyers on strike for reforms?
This makes no sense for Laurent Eues who does not hesitate to make it known. "If a lawyer refuses to go to court, it is not for us a strike but a breach of trust of the person who was paid by his client but did not complete his mission in return, "he assures in August 2017 in Brussels, during a tour of explanation to the Cameroonian diaspora." All the courts of North-West and South-West worked perfectly during this strike because that we wanted to demonstrate the independence of the judiciary purely in relation to the political turmoil, "he adds.
And when he mentions the other claim of English-speaking lawyers, concerning the translation into English of the texts of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (Ohada), the minister does not go either with the back of the spoon: "All texts were translated and published in the Official Journal in 1999. I am surprised to see that one can be a lawyer without reading the Official Journal. And today it is used as a pretext to enter a crisis ".
Finally, he says: "Lawyers [mistreated by the police while trying to protest] have reproached the Minister of Justice for not protecting them. Once again, I thought I was dealing with lawyers. The immunity of a lawyer is valid in the courtroom. Not outside. ". The "mission of explanation" was intended to ease tensions, it was a fiasco. The government appeared arrogant. And the claims hardened.
Very procedural
On the model of Biya, always, Esso maintains - or stages - a distance vis-i-vas of the world of money. His name was cited in the Albatros case, linked to the failed purchase of a presidential plane. A drawer trial that took away Mania Hatnidou Yaya and Jean Marie Atangana Mebara, two of his predecessors at the General Secretariat of the Presidency. But, check made, no charge was withheld against Esso.
He is also credited with front men, like his friend Amougou Belinga, a newspaper boss close to the ruling party. But again, nothing has ever been able to accredit this claim. It must be said that "Monsieur Propre" is procedural. He does not hesitate to file a complaint against those who threaten his reputation for integrity.
Thus he sued the late Emmanuel Etoundi Oyono, then director of the Port Authority of Douala, for "complicity in forgery and use of forgery". He was given a three-year suspended prison sentence after journalists tried to extort money from him on the basis of a false document incriminating him in a case of retrocession - a document that had been made by Etoundi. oyono.
Finally, like his mentor, Esso is a man feared. In his management of the affairs of the state, he has no state of mind. Just read some administrative correspondence. When he was Minister of Agriculture, Essimi Menye had asked him about a questionnaire sent to him by a police investigator.
Esso's answer was five lines long. In a telegraphic and very dry style, the Keeper of the Seals sent him back to his ropes. Terminated in 2015, Essimi Menye has since been exiled to the United States. Since the beginning of March, the processing of cases pending before the Special Criminal Court has accelerated. And this could well have a link with the appointment to the Constitutional Council of Jean Foumane Akame, until then legal adviser to the Head of State.
The departure of this close to the president actually increases the power of Esso, now cleared of a filter that sometimes hindered the decision to prosecute or not a senior government clerk.
But what can Biya find with this man to grant him an indefinite lease to the government? Esso came to the presidency in 1982, a few weeks before he became supreme magistrate, holding the positions of technical adviser and then special advisor. He left a time Etoudi to take the direction of the university of Yaounde. But in 1988 he returned to the presidency as Deputy Secretary General and then Director of the Civil Cabinet - he will remain so for seven years.
He then chained the ministries (Justice, Health, Defense and External Relations) before returning to Paul Biya in September 2006 as secretary-general of the presidency, where he served until he was again appointed to justice in December 2011. No doubt the president appreciates his conception of the statesman, made of distance and height.
Laurent Esso does not deal with any issue under pressure, repudiating his employees with a now cult formula: "Emergency is in the hospital."
Playing cards
Popular, the minister is not. Aristocrat from a great famine in the canton of Dario, in the 5th district of Douala, he pays his hesitation to put his hands in the grease policy. His older brother, Rene Esso Elokan, died in April 2013, was more appreciated: graduated from the Ponts et Chaussées de Paris, he introduced polyphonic singing in Cameroon in 1972 by founding the famous madrigal choir. For some years now, Esso has been trying to make up for lost time by multiplying field trips.
Aware of the fact that, to have a chance to emerge victorious from the succession battle that will inevitably commit itself to the head of the state, it must consolidate its political base. According to a widely shared theory, the stability of this country with its 260 languages would be better ensured if the next president came from a minority group and not from one of the great ethno-regional blocs who look at each other in faience dogs. Esso knows, he has a card to play.
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