Bruno Gain maintained as French ambassador afterall

By Chinje Hopeson in Yaounde

France’s ambassador to Cameroon, Bruno Gain, is not leaving Yaounde soon as many had thought. At the head of French diplomatic mission here since 2009, his departure had since the summer of last year been announced and begun to be celebrated. This was especially so as his first and second advisers, Patrice Bonnal and Jean Louis Roth, had long been replaced by Jean Charles Allard and Laurent Touzard respectively. For, according to French diplomatic practices, such changes should be made at least one year to the arrival of the new ambassador.

But Bruno Gain, 64, will keep calling the shots in Yaounde. This was the outcome of a recent council of ministers at the Elysée. In conformity with a 1969 decree, the decision states that the period of activity of France’s ambassador in Yaounde who has come to the end of his stay – according to diplomatic practices in France – will be extended to September 2013, at least.

The reason for this extension could either be that the French government wants the diplomat to complete a specific mission assigned to him or that Cameroon has requested that he stays longer.

However, diplomatic sources in Yaounde have given more credence to the first hypothesis. “Bruno Gain had begun some high level political and economic missions in Cameroon and had to see them through,” a source at the Ministry of External Relations told The Guardian Post recently in Yaounde.

He cited the award of some contracts within the framework of the debt reduction and development program (C2D), the management of civil society organizations and the regulation of one or two old conventions signed between the state of Cameroon and French companies.

This extension enables the French diplomat to stay one year longer than his predecessors, Georges Serre and Jean-François Valette. On the other hand, it gives him the mandate to stay longer, a bit like Jean Claude Vézian who spent five years in Yaounde (1998-2002) or Yvon Omnès who spent nine uninterrupted years (1984-1993).