In a move that has sent shockwaves through Cameroon’s political landscape and drawn sharp condemnation from the opposition and legal community alike, the country’s parliament has overwhelmingly voted to reintroduce the position of vice president, handing Paul Biya the world’s oldest serving head of state the exclusive power to personally select his own successor.
In a joint session of the ruling party-dominated National Assembly and Senate, legislators voted 200 to 18 in favour, with four abstentions, to pass the bill. The bill stipulates that the vice president will automatically assume the presidency if President Paul Biya dies, resigns, or becomes incapacitated.
The widely criticised bill, which Biya is expected to sign into law, was boycotted by the main opposition party.
Biya, 93, is the world’s oldest leader and has led the central African nation since 1982. He won a widely disputed election last year, his eighth term in office. Now, through a single constitutional amendment, he gains absolute authority over the question that has haunted Cameroon’s political future for years: who comes next?
Under the new law, the vice president will be an appointed official, selected and dismissed at the sole discretion of the president. While the appointee would serve out the remainder of a seven-year presidential term in the event of a vacancy, the interim leader is strictly prohibited from initiating further constitutional changes or running in the subsequent election.
In other words, Biya does not just choose his deputy he chooses who fills the presidency after him, with no electoral mandate, no popular legitimacy, and no ability to entrench themselves beyond that single inherited term. Critics say this is less about succession planning and more about controlling the future from beyond the grave of his own rule.
The reintroduction of the Vice President position marks a notable institutional shift. Under the revised Article 5(3), the President of the Republic is now explicitly allowed to be assisted by a Vice President. This marks a return to a dual executive structure at the highest level of the state.
The office of vice president was scrapped in 1972 following a constitutional referendum. For over five decades, the position sat dormant replaced and eventually rendered obsolete as successive constitutional changes concentrated ever more power in the presidency itself.
Beyond the creation of the Vice Presidency, the reform introduces broader changes that reshape the balance of power within state institutions. The new provisions notably address the management of a vacancy at the head of state, the organisation and functioning of the executive, and the strengthening of the prerogatives of the President of the Republic. Article 53 reaffirms the role of the High Court of Justice as the body competent to judge the President of the Republic, while Article 66 expands on the requirements for asset declaration.
The reintroduction of the vice presidency marks Cameroon’s first major constitutional revision since 2008, when presidential term limits were scrapped in a move that sparked nationwide protests met with a violent crackdown by security forces.
The speed and manner in which the reform was pushed through has drawn as much criticism as the substance of the bill itself.
The draft bill was submitted to parliament on April 2, 2026. President Biya called for an urgent congress bringing together both the National Assembly and the Senate to fast-track the changes. Opposition lawmakers argued that such a major change is not urgent and questioned the legitimacy of altering the constitution, saying they were only informed of the draft during the congress session itself.
Fusi Namukong, a member of parliament from the Social Democratic Front (SDF), described the law as paving the way for a monarchy. “It’s not democratic. This is a republic, and in a republic, those who wield power at the highest level of the state should be elected and not appointed,” he said.
Joshua Osih, chairman of the SDF, called the move a missed opportunity, saying the text “weakens legitimacy, reinforces centralisation, and ignores a major historical grievance.” He called instead for a system where the president and vice president are jointly elected, reflecting Cameroon’s origins as a union of British and French-administered territories.
The Cameroon Bar Association also warned that the amendment “erodes the democratic legitimacy of the presidential office” and undermines the country’s constitution.
The political urgency behind the reform becomes clearer when viewed against the backdrop of Paul Biya’s declining visibility as a leader. Biya’s health has been a topic of intense speculation, as he spends most of his time in Europe, leaving governance to key party officials and family members. His reelection in 2025 sparked widespread protests that left at least four people dead, signalling growing tensions between the mostly young population and its aging leader.
For a country that has never known another leader in four and a half decades, the question of succession has always loomed large. But now, rather than allowing the question to be resolved by voters, the 93-year-old president has engineered a mechanism that answers it entirely on his own terms.
Cameroon’s latest constitutional pivot arrives at a moment when the African continent is already wrestling with serious questions about democratic backsliding from the coup belt of the Sahel to the north, to entrenched civil conflicts in the east and west.
Ruling party lawmaker Tabouli Célestin defended the reform, saying it would enhance governance. “There will be modifications to certain articles of the constitution which will allow the President to establish a Vice President post. This would, of course, contribute to the proper and harmonious functioning of institutions.”
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But critics see through the institutional language. A 93-year-old president, governing mostly from Switzerland and France, rushing through a constitutional amendment to grant himself the power to personally choose who rules Cameroon after him without a single vote cast by ordinary Cameroonians is not a succession plan. It is a dynasty in the making.
President Biya now has 15 days to officially promulgate the legislation into law. When he does, Cameroon will have written a new and deeply troubling chapter in its long struggle between executive power and democratic accountability.
