THE PAUL BIYA MUST GO CAMPAIGN (Part 1 of 2)

THE PAUL BIYA MUST GO CAMPAIGN (This article is a personal reflection I inially posted on my www.tmazonga.wordpress.com blog on 18 September 2011) PREAMBLE One of the greatest positive changes Cameroon has known since I returned home to Cameroon ten years ago after about twenty years in the Diaspora, is freedom of expression, including media expression. Add to all of that, the plethora of newspapers, radio stations and television channels that we now enjoy in the country and you will agree with me that not only has Cameroon changed, it has been revolutionized. When I worked as a journalist for the then London-based WEST AFRICA magazine in the 1980s, there were only two foreign weekly magazines that came to Cameroon: WEST AFRICA (which died just before 1990 having been in publication since 1917) and JEUNE AFRIQUE (today called JEUNE AFRIQUE L’INTELLIGENT) which was and is still published in Paris. The number of newspapers published within Cameroon was not more than ten. Even if the number exceeded ten, publication was irregular. At the time, press censorship was common. Sometimes entire copies of an issue of the magazine were seized by the forces of law and order because it was deemed that some aspects of a published story were unfair to the government. Sometimes we the writers of such articles were wanted. However, I must also say that at times when investigations were carried out after seizures; it was found that the said articles were not really a problem. The problem was with those charged with going through incoming news publications and reporting any irregularities: they did not quite understand the English language in which the stories were written. But all of that has changed today and anyone who last visited Cameroon at that time will simply not recognize the country’s expanded landscape as it stands today. That is why I get uneasy when colleagues take MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS Today, while browsing on the internet, I found an article entitled : « Cameroun : Paul Biya réélu à la tête de son parti le RDPC », (Paul Biya re-elected at the helm of his party, the ... ________________________________________________________________________________ FOR THE REST OF THIS STORY, PS CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW THAT LEADS YOU TO THE APPROPRIATE PAGE OF MY BLOG http://tmazonga.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-paul-biya-must-go-campaign-part-2.html?showComment=1387393779483#c8526254701904278003