Administrative red-tape or political persecution

Ayah Paul now 10 months without salary
- Says his request to go on voluntary retirement was also never granted or rejected
By Sarah Nkongho Ojong in Buea

Ayah Paul

Senior magistrate and former CPDM parliamentarian for Akwaya, Ayah Paul Abine, appears to be paying the price for his stubborn and recalcitrant stance towards the Biya regime.
    The wonder boy from Akwaya who resigned from the CPDM party to challenge President Biya in the 2011 presidential election (he emerged fifth in the elections out of the 23 candidates who ran), has seen the world crumbling on him ever since he started opposing the CPDM regime.
    Ayah Paul told The Median in Buea that he has not been paid his monthly salary since October 2013, neither has he gotten a reply from government ever since he requested to go on voluntary retirement in 2011, ahead of the presidential election that year.

     Ayah who is a Magistrate of exceptional class explained that as a matter of law, when one leaves a ministerial department for parliament, he is considered to be on secondment (detachement). And, that at the end of the secondment you are automatically supposed to go back to your ministry of origin. He wondered why ever since he indicated his readiness and availability to return to his ministry of origin the minister has yet to call him up for duty.
    “This is simply unfair. I am a bona fide citizen of this country. I don’t know what I have done wrong to deserve this kind of treatment,” a discernibly unruffled Ayah Paul wondered in a calm voice.
    Ayah says that even his children have been denied access into some professional schools, even though they all are in possession of the requisite qualifications for entry into these schools.
    “No one of my four children has succeeded in any public examination in Cameroon. Once the authorities see the name Ayah, they make sure that the candidate fails the exam,” Ayah lamented further, even though he did not buttress his claim with valid proofs.
    Justice Ayah Paul however, thanked God for protecting him and for keeping him and his entire family alive despite what he considers as glaring and undeserved injustice.
    Recounting his ordeal, Ayah recalled how he started experiencing signs of open discrimination and persecution when he challenged a bill in parliament in 2003. Ayah said he stubbornly resisted the passing of a bill that was tabled in parliament by the then minister of Justice, Ahmadou Ali. Ayah said he called the attention of the minister that the bill was not well translated in English and that it was incumbent and urgent for it to be properly translated if Anglophone MPs too must read and understand it.
    Ayah recalled how Ahmadou Ali did not take his volte face kindly and how in his unconcealed anger, Ahmadou Ali referred to him as a mere fourth grade magistrate and went ahead to boast that as minister he has better and more senior magistrates (magistrats hors hierarchies) under his control. 
    But Ayah said his martyrdom proper started in 2008 when he challenged the revision of the constitution to permit President Biya to perpetuate himself in power. Ayah said that though he was MP under the CDPM canopy, he told who ever cared to listen that the move to revise the constitution to remove presidential term limits was not only preposterous and undemocratic but an insult to the Cameroonian people. Ayah boycotted the plenary session during which the bill was voted in parliament. Intriguingly, a lady MP from Fako who voted the bill for Ayah  claiming that Ayah gave her a proxy, has today been compensated with a juicy post in the parliament bureau.
    Ayah says it took his sufficient mastery of the law and the constitution for him to continue sitting in parliament and enjoying his benefits as MP until 2013.
    Ayah Paul later resigned from the CPDM (it should be noted that the CPDM has never dismissed any of its members from the party) to take over the mantle of the PAP party. He also later announced his intention to challenge President Paul Biya in presidential elections and actually did so in the October 2011 presidential polls. He emerged the 5th out of the 23 candidates that ran for the presidency. As was expected, President Biya won the vote and by a sweeping majority.
    Ayah says he now depends on transferred earnings from his children to keep life going. He used the occasion to thank his children and his wife especially for being so caring and understanding.