2025 presidentials: When CPDM ministers clash over Biya's candidacy!.

One question was asked to them: Will the Cameroon Head of State, Paul Biya, run to succeed himself during the presidential election next October? Sadi's answer was epigrammatic: “It is 50/50”. 

For Fame Ndongo: "Paul Biya is the candidate. And I say it categorically".

Both personalities are in the inner circle of the regime. Sadi has been Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation and later worked very closely with President Biya as Minister of Special Duties at the Presidency. He was also previously Secretary General of the Central Committee of the ruling CPDM party.

Biya so trusted him to the point that when Cameroon was suspended by FIFA in 2013, the President sent but him to Zurich, not the Minister of Sports or External Relations, to negotiate for Normalisation of football in Cameroon.

Prof Fame Ndongo is equally a confidant and in a position he can read the mind of the Head of State, as he is said to be one of his speech writers.

So how can there be such contradiction as to whether their idol will run for an election in which all the opposition candidates have announced their intentions?

Fame Ndongo based his position on the law by expatiating that: "The CPDM candidate is designated, according to Article 27, paragraph 3, of the party's statutes. What does this article say? The national president of the CPDM is the party's candidate for the presidential election. He is the candidate. And I say it categorically".

He added that: “Our statutes are clear. To be a candidate of the CPDM, you have to be the National President of that party. I don’t know if there is another National President of the CPDM. It is the National President, His Excellency Paul Biya, who is the candidate in the party statutes,” Jacques Fame Ndongo explained.

The Guardian Post, however, notes that one of the party's officials is in court to argue that President Biya's mandate as leader of the party had expired, leaving an embarrassing vacuum, which only a Congress can fill through an election.

He has been unequivocal that if such a Congress does not hold, the party's candidate can be disqualified, if the opposition makes a legal challenge.

Apart from the legal issue, there is also that of old age, which critics like Issa Tchiroma Bakary and others, say makes the President an absentee leader, who governs by procuration, and so is not fit for another term.

Fame Ndongo brushed it aside in the interview, insisting it is not rocket science that Biya will seek reelection in October.

He said: "I think this absence is an apparent absence. This apparent absence takes nothing away from the man's efficiency and takes nothing away from his perfect knowledge of the records. He follows everything that happens every day. He's certainly the most informed man...at 92, it's an enormous merit to continue to govern his country. It is an enormous merit to take an interest in the affairs of the State, to follow the records. I think the luck we have is that the President, at this age, has a phenomenal memory...despite this age, he continues to track his records, it's also a great merit to be saluted".

While Fame Ndongo blows the trumpet for continuity in old age, Sadi is swimming with mounting public opinion and the rule of nature. He banked on President Biya's history of unpredictability, by not committing himself in an atmosphere of uncertainty.

When the wind of democratic change blew in the nineties, CPDM officials, still living the one-party mindset, scurried to the streets, marching against multiparty politics. 

But artful and dribbling Biya shocked them with a challenge to gird their loins and prepare for competition. 

Who knows if it will not be the same scenario this year for him to announce his retirement for the cold war of succession in the party to explode, as has been observed in the contradictions between the top brass of the party in the recent RFI interview?

Such contradictions often result from conflicting goals, ill-defined policies or clashing values, which have been observed recently with ministers making self-criticisms of their performance in public.

As October ticks on, it is left to see what Biya decides as he keeps his joker close to his chest, the nation in suspense and procrastination, which is not good for his party.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3498 of Wednesday July 09, 2025