Cameroon: Paul Biya’s 48-day absence sparks debate over government inaction

The lengthy absence of Cameroon’s long-serving President Paul Biya, who has been in Switzerland since early June, has reignited debate about government inaction, in a country where many crave change.

As of Saturday, it will be 48 days since Biya, 93, who has been in power for more than 40 years and is the world’s oldest head of state, left Cameroon.

An official statement said he departed June 7 for a “short, private stay in Europe” with his wife Chantal Biya.

The president, who has made frequent trips to Geneva over the years, has faced waves of speculation and rumours regarding his health, which at times have been denied by the government.

Responding to articles in the press, Communication Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi issued a statement on June 18, denying that Biya had been hospitalised in a Geneva clinic.

Still, the opposition views Biya’s absence as indicative of a “glaring institutional vacuum”, Mamadou Mota, vice-president of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC), said on Facebook on Friday.

– ‘Autopilot’ –

Earlier this month, the president of the Cameroon Democratic Union (UDC), Patricia Tomaino Ndam Njoya, called on the government to establish “an impartial procedure for determining the temporary or permanent incapacity” of the head of state.

A senior official in the ruling party and minister of higher education Jacques Fame Ndongo on Tuesday dismissed the accusations of a power vacuum.

“Wherever he is, the head of state is meticulously following the files submitted to him… by his aides,” he said.

Allegations of a power vacuum in Cameroon are nothing new — the last time was in late 2024 when Biya spent around 50 days outside the country.

The opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) party on Friday said the country was “on autopilot”.

Biya’s repeated absences over more than 20 years have fuelled the frustrations of many Cameroonians over government inaction.

“People are worn out from waiting,” Viviane Ondoua Biwole, a professor of public management at the University of Yaounde, told AFP.

“First of all because the current government has been in place for eight years, which is a record. Next, because we are coming out of an election with very mixed results. Many people consider after an election, it is time for renewal,” she said.

Biya’s re-election for an eighth term in October sparked demonstrations that were violently repressed.

The government has acknowledged “several dozen” deaths, without providing an exact toll.

The election results were challenged by the opposition and met with reserve by Western embassies.

In his address to the nation on December 31, Biya promised that he would form a new government team “in the coming days”.

Yet seven months on, that hasn’t happened.

Municipal and legislative elections have been postponed numerous times, indefinitely extending the terms of sitting officials.

– Post-Biya –

Cameroonian authorities have initiated some institutional change, replacing the presidents of both chambers of parliament in March and creating a vice-presidential post via constitutional reform in May.

But no vice-president has as yet been appointed.

And the inaction has fuelled conspiracies.

In June, fake documents replicating a presidential decree were delivered to a public radio station in the capital, stating that a vice-president had been appointed.

The journalists determined it was a fake and did not broadcast the content as fact.

The incident amplified speculation about the post-Biya era, with the race for his succession shrouded in uncertainty.

“There is, more or less visible, a crisis at the highest levels of government between those close to the president,” Ondoua Biwole, the Yaounde professor, said.

Political scientist Stephane Akoa agreed, telling AFP that “increasingly leaks mention infighting between the various factions in his inner circle”.

Behind one of the factions looms First Lady Chantal Biya, who is “increasingly present in state affairs”, with “her name often being mentioned in decision-making and appointments”, Akoa said.

Without a vice-president, the senate president, Aboubakary Abdoulaye, is next in line to lead in the event of a power vacuum, until a presidential election can be organised.

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