The Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, says communication officials in the country should be deeply concerned about the October 9, 2011 presidential election. He called on media organs to treat the election information with all fairness, ensuring that the country remains in peace and stability. The Minister on September 9, 2011, rounded off a series of working sessions with advertising agencies, commercial radio stations and television channels. The working sessions started on Tuesday, September 6.

“We talked about treating information with all fairness, ensuring that our country remains in peace, stability, avoiding things that will create hatred within Cameroonians”, Nyoh Moses, the Managing Director of the Douala-based Dan Broadcasting System (DBS), said after Issa Tchiroma met managers of television stations and channels on Friday. Nyoh Moses added, “We were reminded that we will not be authorized to go directly to the candidates to negotiate for adverts for their promotion campaigns but will have to go through advertising agencies.”

The Communication Minister and officials of the Ministry used the working sessions to remind the communication officials of the law that provides that during election campaigns, all political programmes in media organs have to be suspended. This implies that the provision of the law has to take effect from September 24, 2011 to October 8, 2011 at midnight, the campaign period for the presidential election. The managers of general interest commercial radio stations and television channels now know that they have to cover the presidential election process in all objectivity and fairness, giving equal access to all candidates.

The Project Director of the Nkambe-based Millennium Television, Eric Nfor told Cameroon Tribune, “The Minister reminded the media to be responsible and that we should remember in all our editorial policies that the ultimate goal is to preserve national unity, peace and stability of our country”.