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.
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