By DOH JAMES SONKEY
The French Embassy in Yaounde was last February 24, 2020 the centre of a mass protest by hun-dreds of Cameroonian youths who spontaneously converged on the Embassy to express their anger and bitterness against French President, Emmanuel Macron’s condescending attitude towards their President and Father of the Nation, Paul Biya.
Chanting patriotic songs in order to make their voices heard and protesting against any external pressure, the angry youths momentarily interrupted traffic in front of the French Embassy in the nation’s capital.
Even the scorching sun could not prevent them from demonstrating their bitterness through mes-sages such as “Mr Macron, No to neo-colonialism, Mr Macron, our only President is Paul Biya etc.”
Carrying banners, placards and peace plants, the youths most of whom were students of the Univer-sity of Yaounde II, Soa began a protest march in the streets of Yaounde and ended it in front of the French Embassy.
Shouting to the top of their voices, they summoned the French President or his representative in Cameroon, the Ambassador, to present an apology to Cameroonians for what they described as con-descending utterances.
The youths told reporters who rushed to the scene that “We cannot fold our arms and watch a for-eign country destroy the high reputation of Cameroon’s respectable Head of State, H.E Paul Biya. We are determined to take the fight to the international level if French authorities do not apologise to Cameroonians.”
The youths said President Macron’s constant mention of “putting pressure on President Biya” was very offensive to Cameroonians of all political leaning given that Cameroon is a sovereign State with a leader who has been democratically elected and shouldn’t receive orders from without.
The youths argued that the internal problems of the country are already being handled by Cameroo-nians themselves.
On his part, government Spokesperson and Communication Minister, Rene Emmanuel Sadi in a press statement described the utterance of French President as embarrassing to diplomacy and ve-hemently refuted allegations raised by the activists. Minister Rene Sadi said “in the contrary, all the unbearable horrible acts such as assassination, destruction of socio-economic infrastructures in the North West and South West since the beginning of the crisis are undisputedly the works of seces-sionist rebels.”
It was last Saturday, February 22, 2020 that French President, Emmanuel Macron who was inter-rupted abruptly by a Cameroonian activist, stopped and responded to concerns raised by this indi-vidual claiming that there is on-going massacre of Anglophones in the two English Speaking regions of the country.
The activist seized the opportunity to paint a gruesome picture of the socio-political situation in Cameroon and in response, French President, Emmanuel Macron seemly agreed with the description of the situation in Cameroon. He also made other declarations that violated diplomatic canons such as that he is the one who pressured President Paul Biya to free Prof Maurice Kamto and his supporters from prison etc.