Biya’s Ghost Presidency: How Cameroon’s 93-Year-Old Leader Runs a Country from a Geneva Hotel

A president who hasn’t been seen in public for nearly two months is reshuffling his army from a Swiss hotel suite. That is the political reality Cameroon is living right now — and it raises a question that cuts to the heart of democratic governance on the continent: who is actually in charge?

Paul Biya, the world’s oldest sitting president at 93, signed decrees on Monday appointing officials to key military positions and promoting five colonels to the rank of brigadier general — all from Geneva, where he has been stationed since leaving Cameroon on 7 June. His government described the trip as a “brief private stay.” Nearly 60 days later, that description is wearing dangerously thin.

The military reshuffle is not, on its own, surprising. Biya has a well-established pattern of shaking up the armed forces at moments of political pressure. When a coup toppled the Bongo dynasty in neighbouring Gabon three years ago and sent shockwaves across Central Africa, Cameroon swiftly reshuffled its military leadership. When Biya ran for a controversial eighth presidential term last year, he again reorganised the top brass. In June this year, he promoted several members of the defence and security forces to higher ranks. The message these reshuffles send is consistent: the president is watching, the president is in control. The problem this time is that no one has actually seen the president.

An Institutional Vacuum in Plain Sight

The thesis here is straightforward: what Cameroon is experiencing is not merely a prolonged presidential absence, but a structural crisis of legitimacy that the government is actively trying to paper over with bureaucratic activity. Signing decrees from abroad — including authorisations for the government to conclude loan agreements with international financial institutions — creates the appearance of governance without its substance. Governance requires presence, accountability and visibility, none of which Biya is currently providing.

The opposition has been blunt about this. Mamadou Mota, vice-president of the CRM party, described the situation as a “glaring institutional vacuum,” adding that “executive power is exercised at the heart of the nation, not through smoke signals or telepathy from hotel suites on the other side of the world.” That quote stings precisely because it is accurate. A new vice-presidential post, created this April, remains unfilled. A cabinet promised after last year’s election has still not been named. The machinery of state is idling.

Communication Minister René Emmanuel Sadi has pushed back, insisting in an interview with RFI that Biya is alive, working, and will return soon. But the government’s credibility on this subject is compromised by its own decisions. Two years ago, Cameroonian media were formally banned from reporting on the president’s health — a move that press freedom organisations condemned outright. When a state actively suppresses information about its leader’s condition, it cannot then expect the public to take reassurances at face value. The information ban does not protect Biya; it protects the uncertainty around him, and uncertainty is exactly what fuels the speculation the government claims to be fighting.

For young Cameroonians, this moment is more than a political curiosity — it is a live demonstration of what gerontocratic, opaque governance looks like in practice. A 93-year-old man, invisible to his own people, reshuffling generals and signing loan agreements from Geneva while a country of over 28 million waits for a cabinet. The deeper implication is this: when institutions are built around one person rather than around transparent systems, the absence of that person does not just create a vacuum — it exposes one that was always there.