January 20, 2014 BEYOND REPAIRS BY AYAH PAUL ABINE When we say that Mr. President’s speech is routine, we are neither pejorative nor spiteful. At the worst, we are cynical. And one has no reason to be otherwise, seeing how things have gone the past thirty years; how they are going now and how they are most likely to go tomorrow. And it appears we are justified before God himself! But how can it be explained? Here is Mr. President who in his end-of year speech saw everything wrong with his government; and declared that the time for action was now! It all sounded like the conversion of Saul! Yet within days was Mr. President in his self same ways receiving New Year wishes with more pomp and pageantry than usual, paralyzing the capital city with the necessary loss of thousands of hours of work. Here was Mr. President the very same one the very next day endorsing illegality with the same effects and consequences in the presentation of New Year wishes to “the First Lady”. But it is pure illegality! Verily I do swear solemnly that, for all that has been my lot to read, I have not chanced on the phase “the First Lady” in any Camerounese enactment. Nor have I been lucky enough to learn that the candidate “Paul Biya” in a presidential election implies Mr. and Mrs. Paul Biya. (And no difference does it make that it is Biya Paul so as to place him proximate to Ayah Paul)! If logically therefore “the First Lady”, unlike the husband, has not a single vote from any Camerounese to accede to her present invented status, what entitles her to such a position that clearly militates against the protocol laws of Cameroun? Let us take at random the case of the United States of America. When that country appoints its ambassador to Cameroun, are the ambassador’s official duties co-terminus with the duties of the wife who has no letters accrediting her to Cameroun. Even if “the First Lady” was a creation of the law of Cameroun, in what capacity would an ordinary American citizen be presenting New Year wishes to her? And now that more and more women are being appointed ambassadors, would the husband of a lady American ambassador present New Year wishes to “the First Lady” of Cameroun? In what capacity? As a friend? We ask these pertinent questions because we of Southern Cameroons believe and hold firmly that the law is the prime mover in every society that works for and upholds durable peace. If you are Mr. President, it is because you have satisfied the conditions laid down by the law as the prerequisites for becoming Mr. President. If you wear a uniform and bear a gun, it is because you have fulfilled the legal requirements. Doing it otherwise is promoting anarchy and chaos – the very antonyms of legality: the lethal blows to peace. This Anglo-Saxon way of conducting official business is in direct contrast with the Camerounese who treat the law as a mere discretion in their primitive tenets that the law is made by man and so can be disregarded by any citizen in prosecuting for even private personal interests. Take again the current publication by Camerounese journalists that the Camerounese new government is delayed because Mr. President wants to appoint a vice president. We take this seriously because we are already quite familiar with the official procuring of journalists to so prepare citizens’ minds in consideration of pecuniary advantage. Nor are we unfamiliar with the thinking of an average Camerounese that even the constitution is a discretion! Although nothing can be more fantastic; nothing more preposterous; more retrogressive in sane judgment, nothing is impossible in Cameroun! L’impossible n’est pas camerounais is not our invention! And that is the rub! As Mr. President permitted “the First Lady” to receive New Year wishes in the State House before the President of the senate, Madam First Lady was already, for all intents and purposes, in the seat of the Vice President of Cameroun. Much as journalists see Mr. Musonge as their “new constitutional” Vice President, therefore, Madam could well be a confirmation rather than a revelation. Mr. President’s time for action then is business as usual. Apart from the series of New Year wishes cascading from Mr. President through ministers, secretaries of state, generals, directors to messengers with immeasurable waste of financial and human resources, current convoys of ministerial visits across the country tell it all! Damned incorrigible!!! But never forget that God works in a manner most mysterious! All these queer happenings only do strengthen our resolve to manage our own affairs our own ways – where the law shall be supreme; waste minimized; work the cardinal rule; sharing the core value! Long live Southern Cameroons!
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:52:26 +0000
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