Rumour of a constitutional amendment in Cameroon whose thrust is to introduce the post of Vice President had rented the air at the beginning of President Paul Biya’s immediate past tenure, but the suspense ceased to reign after the opening session of parliament on March 11, 2026, when the hallowed chamber’s oldest member, hinted of the possibility of its materialization. In the event Cameroonians are now saddled with a jealously kept stratagem by the CPDM controlled government that reinforces our polity’s drift towards a monarchy. What this staggering display of political treachery readily recalls is a planned, sustained, and deliberate determination to erode the right of Cameroonians to choose their leaders. Indeed, it paints the picture of a crucifixion of democracy.
The notion of crucifixion is embedded in President Paul Biya’s timing of the legislative coup d’etat- for it is exactly what the content of the bill to introduce the post of vice president that came up for deliberation by the congress of the National Assembly and Senate last Thursday, generally commemorated in Christendom as Holy Thursday, represents. On this day, Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, just like president Biya is betraying Cameroon’s democracy. Whether the choice of this special day in Christendom is deliberate or a mere coincidence remains a matter that only the head of state and his coterie of buccaneers are rightly positioned to respond. Nevertheless, whatever must have instigated this brazen incursion into the amputation of a constitutionally grounded right of Cameroonians to participate in governing their country amounts to a monumental betrayal that can only find justification in the warped minds and jaundiced thinking of its purveyors. By Easter Sunday, the template for the perpetuation of a system of governance that seeks to enthrone illegitimacy and exclusivism would have been packaged, sealed and ready for deliverance to the ‘emperor’, Paul Biya, to put the final nail on its coffin before burial.
To all intents and purposes, the content of the proposed constitutional reform evokes the spirit of an unflattering determination to maintain a moribund system of governance formatted more than 60 years ago, and which therefore cannot be foisted on citizens of jet age, piloted by cutting-edge technology. This bill is evidently characterized by disregard for opinions and ideas different from the president’s obsession with power. Otherwise, how can the promoter justify his inclination towards an appointed vice president? As if such an appointment would not be enough derogation of the need for inclusiveness in governance, that is governance that carries the electorate that surrendered its sovereign will to the president along, the bill further arrogates the right to dismiss an incumbent to the president. In fact, it is a surreptitious entrenchment of governance by ambush. This is understandable because President Biya, himself was not elected. His predecessor, President Ahidjo, in his quest to cement the assimilation of Anglophones, had triggered a constitutional amendment in 1979, that robbed Solomon Tandeng Muna, the National Assembly president of the right to succession in favour of Paul Biya, the Prime Minister.
Furthermore, the decision to appoint a vice president whose tenue hinges on the whims of the head of state runs counter to the maxim of democracy that ascribes sovereignty to the electorate. More so, agreeing but not conceding that the constitution permits the president to revert to the parliament for constitutional amendments, conventional wisdom and the necessity for participative governance ought to have infused some sensitivity to legitimacy in the mind of the head of state. In this regard, given the status of such a bill in the life of a nation, a referendum should have been the most appropriate recourse for its acceptance or rejection, especially in a political configuration wherein the parliament is near monolithic. In fact, covenanting with the electorate via a referendum would have heightened their interest in buying into the outcome and ingrain a feeling of ownership.
Correlating to the above, the bill sounds the death knell to democracy judging by its crass inconsiderateness to the bi-jural and bilingual nature of Cameroon. The president cannot be so tactless as to ignore the process that brought the English and French speaking parts of the country together in 1961. Over the years, there has been a manifest inclination towards scaping off all the traces of a union between two entities that came together as partners thereby painting the picture of one having conquered the other. Beginning with the insidious advent of one-party state in 1966, successive presidents have churned out adversarial contrivances of prodigious import, first in 1972, when federal republic was sent to its grave by Ahmadou Ahidjo, president Biya’s predecessor, and later in 1984 with the extinction of the United Republic via a presidential fiat by Paul Biya. Political savvy would have induced the president to expectedly introduce a clause that makes rotation of the presidency between the French speaking and English-speaking parts binding such that each takes their turn as president or vice.
It is indeed sickening that president Biya does not deem it necessary to factor in the realities of our corporate existence into his proposed bill even though such pigheadedness accounts for the ongoing fratricidal war rooted in the same constitutional recklessness. The expectation was that having been saddled with a death toll of close to 8000 lives and counting on both sides of the belligerents- that is the military and irridentist militia, president Biya, would have leaned on the opportunity to reframe the constitution, to extend an olive branch to the aggrieved anglophones by assuring them via a constitutional provision that they too, can aspire to the presidency of Cameroon. Unfortunately, his inordinate desire to foist himself and eventually his cronies on Cameroon has taken the better part of him.
With so many of his close relatives and cronies in very uncomfortable positions with the law, all attention is directed towards ensuring a smooth sail even after nature would have called him to eternity. This explains why corruption is in all its forms a regular feature in the management of state affairs. Unfortunately, the perpetrators are highly placed government functionaries who were supposed to instill a semblance of good governance in the country. In this regard, it becomes difficult to expect democracy in an environment controlled by vested interests either to protect stolen wealth or to ensure unmerited gentrification of their offsprings via admission into choice professional schools that ensure entry into the public service or appointments to sensitive positions to perpetrate the looting of the commonwealth.
Conclusively, the consolation in all of this is that even in Christendom, Jesus Christ resurrected on Easter Sunday and so despite the gloomy picture of a crucified democracy, there is hope for a better tomorrow. This better tomorrow must not necessarily come by force of arms. The barrel of the gun that is employed to cow dissention today may turn against those crucifying democracy tomorrow. The fact that an opportunity was missed on October 12, 2025, when the acclaimed winner of the immediate past presidential election was stripped of his victory, is not a fatality. Another opportunity is imminent in the local elections of next year. The redemptive solution that the aggrieved majority should lean on is to register massively and vote to express their discomfiture with the current state capture.