Americans urge Cameroonians to register and vote.

By Martin Jumbam

The Counselor for Public Affairs at the American Embassy in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Mr. Lonnie Kelley, has urged Cameroonians to register and vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections in this country. In the following interview, conducted in Douala, Mr. Kelley, whose office also takes charge of cultural matters and the media, began by assessing the media in Cameroon. Excerpts.

Mr. Kelley, give us your impressions of the Cameroonian media, which you seem to have had extensive meetings with over the past few months.

I’ve only been in the country for four months so my judgment of the media can only be a guarded one since I haven’t come to know them that well. However, it does seem to me that the media are fairly free, open and it would seem fairly transparent as well. I’m not sure that they are doing as great a job in the field of investigative journalism as they could and should. What I mean is that they seem to get the basic story, which they report sometimes without getting all the facts right. There doesn’t seem to be a follow-up of the stories either. Let me give you a case in point. A couple of days ago, a newspaper carried a headline over the US Ambassador’s picture which read: “A terrorist of democracy.” That was a very catchy headline and I’m sure people who saw that headline must have been keen to read the story. The unfortunate thing is that the headline had nothing to do with the story. It’s shocking when you read something like that and realize that the catchy headline does not reflect the content of the story. I don’t doubt that the publisher’s aim was to attract attention so people would buy their paper. That’s the wrong way to go about it.

Is your office, by any chance, planning to give journalists some seminars on investigative journalism so they could avoid such sensationalism?

I agree that journalists could use training in investigative journalism. That is why we’re thinking of ways to organize courses on the ethics of journalism to sensitize journalists to proper ways of reporting stories, especially in the area of election reporting as elections are just around the corner in this country. We’re looking for someone to help us present such classes and my hope is that we could work with some co-sponsors so we can reach out to a wider audience.

Your Ambassador, Mr. Niels Marquardt, has adopted what some people in this country consider as a rather “aggressive” approach in many of his activities in Cameroon. He’s constantly in the media, at times openly denouncing certain malpractices in this country, notably corruption. Your office must be aware that some of his forthright pronouncements have raised some disquiet in the ruling circles of this country and more than a nod of approval from the opposition circles. What’s going on here?

We at the Embassy are very fortunate to have an ambassador like Ambassador Marquardt. He’s a very active and energetic man, who is very focused on what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. He’s taken full advantage of what my office has to offer and what we can do with him as a team. Public affairs offices at US Embassies around the world are now being more effectively utilized than it was the case previously. That’s what’s perhaps giving the impression of a change in approach to our policy, which Ambassador Marquardt is fostering.

Let’s take the case of the upcoming elections in this country. You’ve been openly heard urging people to register and to vote. Shouldn’t that be interpreted as one more example of your Embassy’s “intrusion” in the political life of our country?

You’re right to say that we would very much like to see Cameroonians go out to register and to vote. We strongly believe that democracy is a very important step for a country like Cameroon. We believe Cameroon is a democracy and, as such, its citizens need to know about their rights and exercise them openly. Before they can vote, they must register first; that is a prelude to voting. That is why we are urging Cameroonians to avail themselves of their inalienable right, duty and responsibility to vote, to make themselves heard through the ballot box, which is the only way they can democratically bring about a change in their society. They are to vote people into parliament to represent their interest, to vote laws that will affect their lives. That is why it is important for them to go out and register to make sure that the right people go into parliament so that positive change can come into their lives.

What do you say to those skeptics, and there are many of us, who believe that they’ve seen it and heard it all before and that it will be the same old story all over again?

We’re hoping that things would be different this time around. Let me share the experience we’ve had at the Embassy over this registration issue. The Ambassador has encouraged all Embassy local staff to go out and register. We wanted to find out how open the registration process is. A number of our staff went out but came back to tell us that it wasn’t possible for them to register. It was either the electoral commission that was not open, or the people responsible for the registration who were not present or, when they were present, they had not received any instructions to register people, etc. We were very disheartened about that fact and it became obvious to us that if our employees, who are living in Yaoundé, were unable to register, then the situation in the remote parts of the country could not be any easier. Such difficulties notwithstanding, we are still strongly encouraging people to go out and register. The more they go out to register, the easier the process is bound to become.

Comments

[Kuntakinte]

Mr Kelley, if Canadians or Mexicans colonized USA and organized elections there, would you vote? Would you consider such free and fair?

That is the situation with us Southern Cameroonians. Mr Jumbam, you are a Southern Cameroonian. Being meally mouthed like this is a condition of owning business in la republique.