Camer360

When the Constitutional Council brushed aside Barrister Akere Muna’s petition seeking to bar President Paul Biya, 93, from contesting the 2025 election, few were surprised. The ruling was less about legal merit and more about institutional loyalty to a regime unwilling to confront its own decay.

Muna’s case, rooted in constitutional logic and moral urgency, argued that a president who has spent years abroad, delegating power to unelected proxies, lacks the credibility to seek re-election. The Council’s refusal to even entertain this reasoning confirms what many already believe: Cameroon’s democratic institutions are captive to the executive.

The rejection reflects a broader tragedy — the normalization of governance by proxy. Through “high instructions” relayed by close aides, the presidency has been reduced to a shell, with a frail leader presiding in name only. Instead of addressing this constitutional crisis, the Council chose to sanctify it.

Critics like Dr. Theodore Ashu Nyenty defended Biya’s candidacy, arguing that no law restricts presidential travel or limits delegation of authority. But this is legal literalism at its most dangerous. Laws are designed to serve the public good, not shield dysfunction. A presidency that exists largely in absentia offends both constitutional logic and democratic accountability.

Cameroon’s tragedy is not simply Biya’s determination to cling to power, but the complicity of jurists and intellectuals who provide scholarly cover for an ossified system. By reducing constitutional interpretation to a tool of preservation rather than accountability, they betray both their profession and their country.

Akere Muna’s petition was never just a legal maneuver. It was a moral alarm bell — a reminder that governance requires presence, responsibility, and vitality. The Council may have dismissed his case, but the questions he raised about the legitimacy of leadership in Cameroon will not go away.

In the end, the ruling exposes a nation where institutions bend to protect power rather than safeguard democracy. Cameroon deserves better than to be ruled by decree from afar, while the country’s future is mortgaged to a political system in denial of its own rot.