Yaounde agog with news of cabinet reshuffle

Talk that President Paul Biya was going to appoint a new Government last weekend rocked Yaounde like a wild storm would.

The anxiety for a cabinet reshuffle climaxed on Saturday, November 8, as people made telephone calls to discuss the issue.

It was not just rumour, because, sources at the state broadcaster, CRTV, told The Post that they were on a red alert waiting for important injunctions from the Presidency of the Republic.

“Management told all senior journalists, technicians and other officials in the house to wait for very important text that borders on ministerial appointments from the Presidency,” a source at the CRTV headquarters at the Mballa 2 neighbourhood told The Post.

“We left our offices very late on Saturday night after having waited in vain. We don’t know what happened,” he said.

It is not known what happened, but observers speculate that the President might have changed his mind following certain pressures. When the new Government failed to come on Saturday, many people were still speaking mouth-to-ear that there will be a sweeping cabinet reshuffle on Monday, November 10. It never came to pass.

Since the September 30 twin elections, The Post learnt, President Biya has been procrastinating on naming a new Government against a back drop of heightened national anxiety. After the elections, there were speculations of a new Government almost on a daily basis. Some local tabloids even went as far as naming Ministers who will be sacked and those who will be appointed.

Observers of Cameroon’s political scene hold that Biya would have respected the tradition and the political jurisprudence by naming the Government in order to compensate those who fought and secured the victory of the ruling CPDM party in the September 30, 2013 twin elections.

Many people who take credit for the CPDM victory in the different constituencies are waiting to be compensated with lucrative appointments.

Another school of thought holds that the President is under obligation to reshuffle the cabinet to pump new blood into the Government. For one thing, the country’s economy has continued to wallow in the doldrums. And it is widely murmured that the 2009 Ministerial team has not fully delivered the expected goods according to Presidential prescriptions.

The country’s economy has continued to be on a decline. As Parliament sits to scrutinise the 2015 budget, statistics show that only about 36 percent of the 2014 public investment budget has been executed.

Moreover, the visiting joint delegation from the International Monetary Fund, IMF and the World Bank, indicates that the economic growth rate will still be largely conservative due to the upsurge of insecurity in the northern part of the country and a fall in the prices of petroleum products in the world market.