Biya’s ‘brief-long’ stay abroad: Time for gov’t to speak out.

Since then, faced with questions about his health, vacuum at the helm of State and cost to the national treasury, ministers have taken turns, stating either that he is working from Geneva or that he, like any employee, is entitled to a vacation of up to 80 days.

On Sunday, the Minister of Communication and Government Spokesperson, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, during an interview with Radio France Internationale, RFI, stated that “President Paul Biya is alive” and that there is “no power vacuum”.

He firmly rejected the rumours and demands from the opposition and civil society, regarding the situation at the highest level of government. 

“The opposition figures who are clamouring for a declaration of a power vacuum at the helm of State should, it seems to me, adopt a more rigorous and objective interpretation of the Constitution,” he said. 

Against consistent warp arguments by some opposition apparatchiks that the stay, one of the longest in his 43 years and counting reign, justifies a vacancy, the Spokesman reiterated that only the Constitutional Council is authorised to declare a vacancy, which is absolutely not the case. 

“…the Constitutional Council has not ruled to declare a vacancy of power at the helm of State,” he told the France-based media organ.

It was the second time Minister Rene Sadi was refuting the speculation. The first was in Jeune Afrique, which reported that the President was hospitalised in a clinic in Geneva.

But when asked by RFI journalists when the Head of State will return, the minister said: “President Paul Biya is alive. President Paul Biya has not resigned. I cannot tell you exactly when President Paul Biya will return...and even if I know, it’s not in my place to announce it here. I can at least tell you that he’ll be back very soon”. 

Yes, the French medium is not the place for the Government Spokesman to announce when President Biya will return. It is in Yaounde that he can and should do that to dispel harmful contradictory positions among members of government.

The minister, the official voice of the government, had earlier divulged that the President was working from abroad.

Truth be told, Cameroonians and the probing media have observed the publication of decrees, telegrams and borrowing authorisations, signed with his official seal, with indications of being “done in Yaounde”.

Debunking the posting by the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Grégoire Owona, that the Head of State was a "worker," entitled to up to 80 days of annual leave in Europe, Jean de Dieu Momo, Minister Delegate to the Minister of Justice, reiterated that a President of the Republic is neither an employee nor a civil servant, but rather the holder of an elected mandate, governed by a specific statute and not by the Labour Code.

His articulate argument, which overtly challenges that of a fellow member of government, illustrates disunity and incoherence in the system and more particularly in a “short” trip that is going into two months.

Among ongoing criticisms from the opposition, the opinion of Roger Justin Noah, Deputy Secretary General and Acting National Secretary for Communication of Maurice Kamto’s MRC party, touches the heart of the debate.

He has stated that: “The Cameroonian people have the right to be informed”, not through foreign media, not gossips or speculation about when their President returns to the Presidency of the Republic, the seat of government.

His reaction tallies with that of the Minister Delegate to the Presidency, Benoit Ndong Soumeth, who has been quoted in the media as saying: "The population may, out of affection, feel the need to know what is happening to its leader”.

As Dieudonné Essomba, a Biya loyalist said on Vision 4 TV at the weekend: "If, for example, Biya had reshuffled his cabinet and appointed a Vice President, he could spend 100 or 200 days abroad. The fact is, the situation is so confused, and we don't even know who is doing what anymore".

For The Guardian Post, which is  widely considered the voice of the people, there is an organisational void that makes the President's prolonged absence, though legally without qualms, politically sensitive, portrays cacophony in the regime’s communication policy, which undoubtedly produces an erosion of trust in the government.

It is not good for diplomacy, not good for governance and not good for foreign investors.

To correct those flaws, some of which are made just to play to the gallery, others to be noticed and some cynically intended to destabilise the government, the Minister of Communication and Government Spokesman needs to, sooner than later, call a press conference in Yaounde, to explain to Cameroonians, when their leader will return to the country to tackle some of the challenges that cannot be effectively done through the application of Information and Communication Technologies from abroad.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3868 of Tuesday August 04, 2026