OF CRTV APPOINTMENTS AND BAMILEKE PETITION

The appointments of journalists into position of responsibilities has recently caught many English speaking journalists pondering the type of Unity Biya's regime is preaching. There has been an outcry from many non crtv journalists on the treatment of English speaking journalists. While the top positions remained with French speaking journalists, English speaking journalists were given sub positions and in some cases not at all.

Senior Journalist Tapang Ivo Tanku, a Fulbright scholar has been one of the lone voices calling for the cancellation of the appointments. He has put CAMASEJ to task, accusing the English Speaking Journalists Association for failing to condemn such appointments. Recently, Tapang created an online petition to force the presidency to rescind such appointments. In fact, there is a motion already calling for the impeachment of the CAMASEJ president Simon Lyonga for failing to defend the plight of English Speaking Journalists, an appointment in which he benefited as an animator.

The crux of this post is that, a Bamileke association known as LAAKAM has condemned the appointments and challenged the marginalization of Bamilikes at the state parastatal. While, I think it is fair for them to protect the interest of Bamilikes at CRTV, I disagree with their petition.

This is because if I want to talk from the normal eye of a Cameroonian keeping at side the Southern Cameroons agenda, Cameroon is a country that came as a result of English and French Cameroons. The French representation and English Representation should be equal because the English part was a country on its own that willfully joined the French. The appointment should have taken into considerations the bicultural state of the country. We cannot petition the non inclusion of certain tribes into appointments because Cameroon is made up of 250+ tribes. We can only petition if one tribe dominates and if one group of people are excluded, the group of people I mean French and English Cameroonian. That is the eye we are supposed to be looking.

Bamileke (Western Region) is part of French Cameroon and French Cameroon already has a bigger share of the appointments, the other Cameroon is lacking. If we start looking at tribes here, then it would not be feasible. Soon Manyu people, lebialem or Nso union would denounce. This is not suppose to be. Our concern should be that, English speaking journalists should have a fair share of the appointments, but not coming from a particular tribe or so. Of course we cannot have all tribes represented.

Appointments should be looked from the angle of English and French Cameroon while making sure one particular tribe is not dominated.

God is Still saying something.

Mark Bara.
7/sept/2015