We need to encourage our army - Journalist

A CRTV journalist Fonka Muta Beau-Bernard who was at the solidarity march was interviewed. Here's what transpired between him and the interviewer.

Q: What significance do you attach to this demonstration today?

A: Our objective was simply to bring Cameroonians both old and young, from North, South, East and West together, to express solidarity with the soldiers and pay tribute to them for the sacrifices they are making for the country; dying on the battlefield for our sake, as they resist the Boko Haram insurgency in the Far North.

We felt that, if we don’t do something to show our appreciation for the sacrifices they are making it would be ingratitude on our part and we will not be encouraging them to do more.

Another of our objective was also to boost their morale; to make them know that the whole country is behind them. It was our own way of organising Cameroonians to say thank you to our defence forces.

Q: Some commentators said that the journalists’ role is to report the war, to inform and create awareness among the citizens and not to organize public demonstrations as you have done today. How do you react to this?

A: Those who say so may have a point. But they should also know that the journalist plays a dual role as a professional and a citizen at the same time. As citizens, we have to be patriotic to our country and its institutions.

Most of the organizers of this demonstration are reporters; and whenever we go to the battle front to cover the war we put on our caps on as journalists and put aside our sentiments.

We report the facts as they are, without bias and without any influence from politics or whatever. But we realised that, the civil society in our country was not playing its role adequately, so we thought that the civil society needed some kind of push. And this is that push we tried to give them today, and you can see that the mobilization was fantastic; the objective was attained.

Q: Others said the march was a way of getting Cameroonians to plebiscite President Paul Biya as the man for the Boko Haram situation?

A: Well, fortunately or unfortunately for Cameroonians, President Paul Biya is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces at this time of the Boko Haram war, and whether we like it or not he is the guy of the moment.

But that was not the point we wanted to make in our demonstration. If you observed and listened well, you would realize that we never sing songs that projected the name of any particular person; we chanted songs that were typical of Cameroon as a nation; songs that could serve as a moral booster to the armed forces.

I think plebisciting the head of state who is also the commander of the armed forces is not a wrong thing to do. But we did not do that during our march. We were out only to encourage our soldiers on the war front and we did just that.

Q: Were you satisfied with the march? Did you meet your set target especially in terms of popular participation?

A: I will say yes. We are very satisfied. You could see the enthusiasm of the crowds that came out to march. You could see how they scrambled for T-shirts and other things that we provided. In fact, we were simply overwhelmed. It is true we could not provide T-shirts for everybody that came. But judging from the diversity of the participants, judging from their enthusiasm and their great numbers we really think that the objective was attained.

True, it could have been better organized. But you know that we are only journalists and we are not experts in organizing public demonstrations. But I think this first try was not a bad at all.