Presidential Aspirant Paul Ayah Addresses Cameroonian Women



Hon. Paul Ayah Abine

 Honorable Paul Ayah Abine, one of  the over 15  Cameroonian  presidential hopefuls for the 2011 presidential election has spoken to Cameroonian women who constitute over 51% of  the country’s  about 20 million population.

 Following is the March 6, 2011 address of Hon Ayah, widely believed to be the most reliable and credible person to challenge the incumbent Paul Biya, who has ruled the country for 28 years:

“WOMEN, THIS IS OUR CHANCE!

Fellow Cameroonian women;

      It is a great honor for me to avail myself of the commemoration of the international day of the woman to share with you my plan for the Cameroonian woman when I become the president of our fatherland in the months ahead. May I begin by acknowledging that you are our mothers: the mothers of everybody including the woman herself; mothers full of tender love too deep to describe? We owe you our lives absolutely. Sweet mothers indeed you are as a musician has so aptly put it. You are unique!

      If in the past, man saw the woman, his own mother, as a second class person, it was sheer ingratitude to the woman who risked her life to bring him into this world; the woman who welcomed insomnia to defend him when he was utterly powerless – defenseless; the woman who worked indefatigably to bring him up. It was ignorance as truly the maker of a person must always be greater than the person. It was vanity as without the woman the world would have ended before the man was born.

      In today’s modern world, however, it is universally acknowledged that the woman shall stand side by side with the man in nation-building. By implication, we should today talk about persons without even allusion to masculinity or femininity. Furthermore, there should no longer be preserves for whomsoever by reason of sex aside from the realm of the natural. We are equals!

     That is why I feel uncomfortable with the proposition of some international organizations apparently endorsed by women’s organizations that thirty percent of decision-making positions should be allocated to women. Why thirty percent? My own strong conviction is that if God created man and woman, it necessarily follows that the intention was that the two should share the world between themselves in two equal halves. If a third was intended, a third person would have been created, perhaps half man and half woman. But that never was!

   Therefore have I come out with “My Vision of a Born Again Cameroon” following that line of reasoning. Indeed, in my new Cameroon, the Vice President shall without more be a man where the President of the Republic is a woman and vice versa. If twenty ministerial portfolios there are, they shall automatically be occupied by ten women and ten men. The man’s right to go and come shall be co-terminus with that of the woman under the same circumstances.

   Besides, the law shall recognize the woman’s right to own land; the woman’s right to own and operate a bank account independently; the woman’s right to loans and investment; the woman’s right to succeed her deceased husband. And the law shall above all prohibit in absolute terms all forms of domestic violence.

   I entertain little doubt that your full participation in the running of State affairs would accelerate our development tremendously. This is palpable from the successes of women’s organizations in churches and in the civil society. I am also helped to that conclusion by the fact that your energy seems to be inexhaustible. Is it not common knowledge that when husband and wife return home from their offices, the woman enters the kitchen directly to prepare food for the family; and yet she still has enough energy left to attend meetings without fail? Who doubts then that, given the opportunity, such enormous energy would make ours an emergent state by 2020 instead of 2035?

      Fellow Cameroonian women;

To be able to implement those ambitious programmes, I need your support absolutely. Other persons there are who may sooner or later make similar promises to you. Such promises should be not more than carbon copies of “My Vision of a Born Again Cameroon”. I entreat you then to remember always that a copy however clean it may look can never be the original. Paul Ayah’s is the only original vision of a born again Cameroon. DO, please, take your seat on the new vision train before it gets full!

      Have wonderful celebrations!

 PAUL AYAH