The technique of managing the affairs of the State, known as the “very high instructions of the President of the Republic” used by Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon, has come to revive the controversy on the place and the role of the Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute. And this, even though the debate on the succession of Paul Biya is no longer a political taboo within a regime which consecrates the President of the Republic as “head of the institution which encompasses and overhangs all social institutions, chief of all chiefs within the state”.
From our correspondent in Cameroon,
Politics is sort of his cup of coffee. At Terrific Coffee from Bastos, a residential area that houses a number of diplomatic representations and international organizations, a stone’s throw from the presidential palace in Yaoundé, Stéphane Akoa is not ready to forget a missed appointment. The political scientist, one of the keen observers of the Cameroonian scene, was to deliver, at the end of June, a presentation on the “very high instructions of the President of the Republic”, within the framework of the “Grand palaver”, a framework for public discussion set up by the periodical Germinal which, for the occasion, invited us to reflect on ” presidential succession in Cameroon: games and issues “. After allowing the debate, the administration had to retract. On the alleged grounds of a ” risk of social disruption “.
The “very high instructions of the President of the Republic”? The formula is now known to all Cameroonians and is part of popular vocabulary. It is that the expression is contained in the official correspondence by which the Minister of State, Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, transmits directly to the ministers, the directives attributed to Paul Biya, for the treatment of certain files of the Republic. These documents, often considered confidential, are as much the subject of leaks on social networks as of analyzes of political conflicts within the system.
Accentuation of the cramping of the Prime Minister
In this case, this “technique” for managing state affairs has revived two trends observed for several years: the accentuation of the narrowing of the Prime Minister, and concomitantly, the strengthening of the power of the secretary General of the Presidency. “ In a two-headed executive, President of the Republic/Prime Minister, the Prime Minister can only survive politically if he knows how to remain in the shadow of the President of the Republic. Being Prime Minister therefore already means accepting to manage only the bare minimum of the system of governance. What happens next is just the sum of context and personality. The context is one where the President of the Republic is less and less able to be constantly on the front line due to age (89 years old, Editor’s note). The personality is that of the secretary general of the presidency who, less than his predecessors, them, more erased and more discreet, does not know how to stay in the background », Analyzes Stéphane Akoa.
This operation on “very high instructions” revealed the dysfunctions which it illustrates in respect of the perimeters of competence within the State apparatus. As the academic Viviane Ondoua Biwolé, an expert in governance issues, points out, ” the instruction is a management tool used by a line manager in his functions of authority vis-à-vis his collaborators. As regards the Minister of State, Secretary General to the Presidency of the Republic (SGPR), he can only give instructions to his collaborators in the General Secretariat and, by delegation, to the members of the government whose structure is attached to the Presidency of the Republic (Higher State Control, Defence, Public Procurement, among others). For other ministers placed directly under the authority of the Prime Minister, orthodoxy would like him to ask the Secretary General of the Prime Minister’s Office (his counterpart) to transmit to the Prime Minister (who is not under his hierarchical authority) the instructions of the President of the Republic (in application of a delegation) to relay to the ministers “.
Many are those who evoke and convene a presidential decree of February 5, 2009, granting permanent delegation of signature to the Secretary General in the name of the Head of State, to try to explain the inflation of the “very high instructions” noted for a long time month. This type of presidential text may not be new, but its publication on social networks, in a context where the succession of Paul Biya is being discussed more and more openly, including in his camp, is not without political issues. ” In fact, the delegation of signature enjoyed by the SGPR is a capital, a power, a reserve of strength which is worth its weight in gold in the succession market in Cameroon. The quasi-monopoly power that it grants to its holder can only worry the other agents of the said market. Aware of this power, the SGPR sometimes plays it out on time and out of time. Via the repercussion of the “high instructions” of the PR, it regularly insinuates itself into the fabric of public policies. Make no mistake about it, what is most often at stake, beyond the public policies concerned, is the display and demonstration of the agent’s talent, it is the staging of the minister’s capacity -competitor to hold a greater political role, that of a statesman “, explains the political scientist Joseph Keutcheu.
End of reign
This is enough to justify the doubt and suspicion that nevertheless surround the “very high instructions” as to their authenticity and their real purpose. What does not escape the political scientist: The major challenge facing the SGPR is that of creating a consensus around what it means to speak in the name of the Head of State. The debate around the patrimonialization of presidential speech is indeed regularly maintained by its critics. This debate also frames the succession competition in Cameroon. »
Thanks to what is considered, even experienced as an end of reign, in a state at the head of which Paul Biya has been for forty years, each protagonist – putative or real – has his own strategy. Notoriously supported by part of the private press which presents him as a ” servant of the state “, of which the ” loyalty to the President of the Republic » suffers no doubt. Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, who totals eleven years as secretary general of the presidency – a record – lets say.
As for the very discreet Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, in office since January 2019 following other English-speaking figures from 1992, he is presented as a man of duty, little inclined to complain publicly about his discomfort that we said confessed in private. Silence is, under Paul Biya, an asset as much as a political resource.