Marie-Elise Gbèdo and politics : It's now in the past

Politics, it's over for the former Minister of Justice Marie-Elise Gbèdo. This is the essential thing to remember from the words of the lawyer aged 68 years during his visit on Friday 29 avril 2022 on the set of 5/7 Morning of the Broadcasting and Television Office of Benin (LOCATION).

We saw it coming. The one who also held the portfolio of the Ministry of Commerce, of Crafts and Tourism in the past has said that she is retiring from political life to devote herself to something else. “Yes politics and me, It's finish ", she let go. She justifies herself: " There is a time for everything, I'm getting old".  The decision of this lawyer known for her fight for the defense of the fairer sex, is, she says, motivated by the fact that life is not all about politics. It is precisely for this reason that she has been devoting her energy to the rising generation for some time. “I train the younger generation and it really makes me happy because there is no day or weekend when I am not asked by the younger generation to come and help them move forward,” she says.. Like what, you have to know how to leave things before they leave you.

Marie Elise Gbèdo, The example

President of the Association of Women Lawyers of Benin (AFJB), renowned lawyer in business law and several times presidential candidate, Marie-Elise Gbèdo is a reference. Indeed, in an Open Heart interview granted to currentsdefemmes.org, she specified that she left Porto Novo in 1975 for the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. Ten years later, she took an oath before the First Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal. She measures how lucky she was to travel, to be able to do a good education and to have always been supported by his family. Ses parents, one civil servant and the other a midwife, were "intellectuals who married modernism and traditionalism. » Long deceased, her mother was "a free woman" since Marie-Elise remembers her, dressed in her garden in red shorts and a T-shirt, an outfit still considered indecent today for an African mother.

The main asset of Marie-Elise Gbèdo continues in the columns of our source is her inflexible temperament. Vice-president of the AFJB for eight years, she knew that everyone was convinced that she was the president. Why ? “I have more charisma. That's all. It can't be bought, God gave it to me. It is indeed always she who knew how to put herself forward and had the courage to denounce discrimination against women.. When she stands for the presidential elections of 2001, she wants above all to go to the end of her ideas and “prove that women can be leaders”. As part of its activities at the AFJB and its media interventions, she constantly tells women : " you can ! ». " SO, I had to lead by example”.

When she announced her candidacy for the post of head of state, this divorced woman herself was called names and accused of wanting to push women to divorce and of being a "home wrecker". But Marie-Elise Gbèdo does not let herself be dismantled for so little. Having occupied a post of Minister between 1998 and 1999, she knows politics, "this basket of crabs", and knows how to integrate and resist pressure, to baseness, to the accusations. “In terms of work, i still want to fight, measure myself… " In politics, you also have to fight on the ground “so that the people understand that you want to gain power”. She did not win more than one percent of the vote but she does not consider this otherwise unreliable score a failure., in the context of elections that it considers fraudulent. In 2006, she will be a candidate again and will defend the same program, based on justice, "basis of the economy and social development".

Marie-Elise Gbèdo, the amazon

Quoting and reinterpreting André Breton, she stresses that “women are the future of men and women are the future of Africa”. This is why she believes in the integration of women in the development process.. According to her, it is above all through mass education that we will overcome the obstacles to development : " Without any education, you can't talk, you can't think. It is knowledge that opens our eyes”. And an educated woman will necessarily invest in the education of her own children.. A real political will is therefore needed to develop the education of children, especially that of little girls. Marie-Elise Gbèdo fights and will always fight in this direction. She may have only one regret, that of not having had daughters, but two boys, who know their mother's fight perfectly and to whom she keeps repeating that it is in their interest to meet a woman like her. But are there really two like her? ? The currentsdefemmes.org site arises.

Damien TOLOMISSI