Context
Where is Paul Biya? This remained a burning question on the lips of many Cameroonians in the months of September and October. During that period, discussions in Cameroon and abroad were centered on the whereabouts of President Paul Biya, amidst rumors that he was in a critical condition in a health facility in Europe while others alleged that he had died. The speculations were fuelled by the prolonged absence of President Paul Biya from public life at a moment when important world events needed his presence and active participation. The situation was made worse by the silence of his Civil Cabinet.In the fray, a narrative emerged, which was published by Cameroon News Agency on Facebook, according to which Section 6 of the Constitution authorizes the Constitutional Council to declare a vacancy if the President spent more than 40 days abroad. The post had over 1.8k likes, 1.3k comments, and 79 shares. The comments section went viral with derogatory reactions about Republican institutions, the Constitution, and the rule of law in Cameroon.
The same information was relayed on Facebook by Story Time and on X by Celestin Atanga. Though the Director of the Civil Cabinet and the Minister of Communication eventually issued two separate releases on October 8, debunking rumors about the death of President Biya and qualifying them as pure fantasy by mischievous individuals, both failed to address the claim that the office of the President could be declared vacant if he did not return by the 40th day. For his part, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, simply banned all discussions on traditional and social media platforms in line with the condition of the President’s health without clarifying or debunking allegations of his possible destitution.
President Paul Biya left Cameroon on September 2, accompanied by his wife and a college of members of government for the 4th China-Africa Forum that was held from September 4-6 in Beijing. He was last seen in public on September 8, at the end of the Summit. Suspicions heightened when the President did not show up for high profile international events like the 79th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, the opening session of the 19th summit of La Francophonie on October 4, and the Sustainable Development Summit in Hamburg, Germany.
It is based on these happenings that speculations about his deteriorating health went viral, with people, including jurists, arguing that the Constitutional Council will apply section 6 of the Constitution to declare a vacancy if he does not return after the 40th day abroad. For these reasons, the atmosphere remained tense in the country, with Cameroonians requesting to see real-time and material evidence that President Biya was still alive.
The results of our investigation led us to flip through the Constitution to see what it says about vacancy at the Presidency of the Republic and under what conditions it can be declared.
Verification Process
What does the author say ?
Through Google Search, we noticed that it was not the first time that President Biya prolonged his stay out of the country and that it was also not the first time that the media, Cameroon News Agency, was publishing the same misleading information in line with section 6(4) of the Constitution. On August 11, 2021, the media had made the same claim after the President spent over 30 days abroad. So, we turned our attention to the publisher of Cameroon News Agency, Nfor Hanson, to find out what meaning he made of the post on his platform. He said, “we posted this up and a lawyer reached out and said, the article is misunderstood. That the 40 days talks about when a vacancy has been declared already. He also said that only the Constitutional Council can declare that and also, that the Constitutional Council can as well say that the president is out there working for Cameroon.”
What does the law say?
In Section 6(4) of the Constitution, it is stipulated that “where the office of President of the Republic becomes vacant as a result of death, resignation or permanent incapacity duly ascertained by the Constitutional Council, the polls for the election of the new President of the Republic must be held not less than 20 (twenty) days and not more than 120 days after the office becomes vacant.” From the above paragraph, we understand that even though the Constitutional Council is the organ with the legal competence to declare a vacancy for the office of President, the Constitution makes no provision for the number of days the President should not exceed abroad. By extension, it means that the office of President of the Republic cannot be declared vacant just because the President has not been heard from or because he has stayed out of the country for long.
Further probing led us to the Law of April 21, 2004 on the organization and functioning of the Constitutional Council, which disposes in its Section 38 that “The Constitutional Council, seized by the President of the National Assembly, after the consent of the Bureau, in the case provided for in Section 6 (4) of the Constitution, notes the vacancy of Presidency of the Republic. It then decides by a two-thirds majority of its members. Section 39: The declaration of vacancy is published in accordance with the procedure of urgency, then inserted in the Official Journal.”
Here again, we notice that even though the law identifies the President of the National Assembly as the competent authority to notify the Constitutional Council of a vacancy at the Presidency, the law does not link this to the number of days the President should not exceed out of the country.
We also delved into the Law of April 19, 2012, relating to the Electoral Code, which disposes in Section 143 that “ (1) In the event of vacancy of the Office of President of the Republic due to resignation, the resigning President shall so inform the nation in a message.
(2) The President of the Republic shall then tender his resignation to the President of the Constitutional Council, who shall send a copy thereof to the President of the Senate.”
Section 145 adds that “(1) The permanent unavailability of the President of the
Republic shall be ascertained by a majority of 2/3 (two-thirds) of the members of the Constitutional Council.(2) Such unavailability shall be referred to the Constitutional Council by the President of the National Assembly under the conditions laid down by regulation.” From the above, vacancy in the office of the President may arise from his resignation or permanent unavailability, which must be approved by two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly. In the case in point, the matter was never deliberated at the National Assembly, thus no vacancy was notified.
What experts are saying ?
News articles were also found online that zoom in on Paul Biya’s habitual long trips abroad on the platforms of the BBC and The Guardian Post without, however, clearly raising the number of days the Head of State spends out of the country as a constitutional issue that puts his position as Head of State into question. So, we also reached out to a jurist and constitutionalist, Dr. Ashu Nyenty (PhD), to get his reading of the concerned section of the Constitution. His reaction was that “there is no such section (article) in the Cameroonian Constitution that limits the President’s stay abroad. The purported interpretation given to Section 6(4) of the Constitution is baseless, unfortunate, erroneous, and a legal abracadabra.”
What are the viewpoints of the political actors ?
Notwithstanding, renowned jurist Barrister Tamfu Richard petitioned the President of the National Assembly on October 17, 2024, praying for him to make use of his powers in accordance with Section 47(2) of the Constitution and seize the Constitutional Council to declare the office of the President vacant, arguing that the Presidency, which is his duty post, is located in Yaounde and not in Geneva.
This debate also prompted political leader Kah Walla of the Stand Up Cameroon movement to give her opinion on X on the conditions for declaring a power vacuum, according to her team’s analysis and interpretation of the constitution. Among the conditions mentioned, there is no mention of the number of days as a cause for declaring a power vacancy.
Verdict
While we have established through this verification process that there’s no constitutional limit to the number of days the President can spend abroad, it is a cause for concern as it lays bare the need for effective and efficient leadership at this critical moment of Cameroon’s history. There’s, therefore, a need for the legislator to put guardrails on presidential movements; otherwise, there may come a time when the president will spend even six months or more out of the country without justification, and no one will have any legal basis to hold him accountable.
Recommendation
The speculations about the President’s health, misleading interpretations of sections of the Constitution, and the tensions that flared in the country transmit the dire need for the Civil Cabinet to communicate appropriately and properly on the President’s activities and movements. Cameroonians have a sovereign right to be informed about where their president is and what is happening to him. The Civil Cabinet has a Republican responsibility to communicate to Cameroonians details about the condition of their president in order to dispel tensions and misinformation, for “rumours prosper where information is absent”. Timely communication from the Civil Cabinet would have avoided the propagation of false information about the President’s condition.
