RECORDER: Hon. Ayah, happy New Year.
Hon Ayah Paul: Thank you .Thank you for coming .Happy New Year to you in return.
Honorable, how would you as a politician describe the just-ended year 2014?
2014
was more of a fake year than otherwise in terms of politics. We have
often said that there is no legality in what we call reunification in
Cameroon. So the big event titled “The Fiftieth Anniversary of the
Reunification of Cameroon” was really fake. As I have often said, our
parliament has ceased to play the role of a parliament-because we don’t
see a situation where Parliament is in session to enact the finance law
and while they are still in session, the President of the Republic
-after a cabinet meeting, comes out with they call Plan d’Urgence-that is, revenue
outside the control of Parliament. The much I know is that the Cameroon
Constitution provides that the President can, by ordinance, make use of
revenue outside the budget; and subsequently, Parliament would meet and
either endorse the ordinance or reject it. But I know no law anywhere
where we can have two parallel budgets in a country: the one adopted by
Parliament and the one adopted by the President of the country. This is
violation of the Constitution. And when we put into practical terms, the
investment budget of 2014 was executed at less than 35%, now if we
have adopted a budget which is even higher in amount and the President
has superimposed what they call Plan d’Urgence up to a thousand billion
FCFA, I doubt where the President is going to get the people who will
execute the budget and the Plan d’Urgence.The very people who could not
execute the budget of 2014? So to me, it is a paradox .In terms of political events, I would say nothing really happened in 2014.
What is your reaction to President Biya’s New Year Message?
I
know the President has just made an end-of -year speech but everything
in that speech is just routine. Countries around have gone to war over
the years, yet they are developing. If Boko Haram-what they call a
terrorist organization, is causing havoc, I don’t see how anyone can
invoke it as a cause for our country not to develop. Indeed, 2014 was
simply a year of contradictions.
A
few days before the end of 2014, your name, I understand, was a subject
of discussion in various newsrooms of the national media, because you
were allegedly elected in absentia as National Chairman of the Southern
Cameroons National Council (SCNC); then shortly, in a answer to your
cry, to be re-integrated into the Ministry of Justice after your 11
years in Parliament, President Paul Biya appointed or promoted you to
the rank of Advocate-General at the Supreme Court. What is your
reaction?
My
reaction, first, is that I have decided not to say anything about SCNC
in the time being. I may give you another opportunity to come for an
interview on the SCNC on a subsequent date. So, I would not say anything
in that regard now
As
regards my going back to Ministry of Justice, I read a few write-ups
which have no meaning. I think that, modesty demands that if somebody
does not know, they should seek expert opinion. What I know is that the
law of this country makes it possible to leave your department as a
civil servant and work in another department; and the law provides for
detachment. (I have heard the word secodment, but I have not seen
it in an English dictionary. So I prefer detachment) When you are so
detached,at the end of your period of detachment, the law provides that
you come back to your former department as of right; the law on the
election of Members of Parliament equally provides that for all the time
you are in Parliament if you are a member of the judiciary, you are on
detachment; which is to say what? For my eleven years in
Parliament I was on detachment and as a matter of law and at the end of
my mandate, I had to go back to my ministry of origin as of right. This
is a matter of law as I have said and I, as a man of law should not be
the first man to go against that law.
I
would have been re-absorbed in the Ministry of Justice as soon as my
mandate came to an end in September 2013 in accordance with the law, but
for one reason or the other that was not the case and I had to wait for
fifteen months.
Probably
as some people have indicated it was because the Judicial Council had
to meet to re-absorb me. I entered Parliament as Vice-President of the
Court of Appeal here in Buea and therefore a magistrate of the bench,
and I could not be absorbed until the Judicial Council had to say
something about it. So is the law and I have simply complied with it.
