What does it mean to me to be a journalist reporting on these elections?

To be like a journalist is to be like an eye, a transformer. Or like the man in the novel “The beautiful ones are not yet born” by writer Ayi Kwei Armah about a man who struggles with the reality in post-colonial Ghana. The eye is the director of the body. It is from it that the mind starts decisions for the body to act. A journalist is therefore an eye for the nation. Why is he/she like an eye, transformer or the man in the above mentioned book? With personal experience and feasibility study in the field of journalism allow me to justify my self.

For people who know that I am a journalist, where and whenever I reach to any place they ask me in most cases the same type of a question. “What is the latest today?” In the local Arabic of Juba they ask; “akbar nahar de sunu?” On many occasions as I keep on experiencing this same type of question from different people, I discovered that a journalist is looked upon like an eye. Through him people are able to see, examine and transform. Simply because they believe that he/she is the right person to get information. The above statement also reveals to me that the public through a journalist looks on what is happening in the economy and thus brings change into a nation.

Living, working and reporting in Sudan on the elections as a journalist is like struggling on enlightening everybody in a developing country into a transformed nation that should be like any other democratic one in the world. A country where the rights for others are respected. Sudan is a country that for over two decades had been in a war. Consequently it should not be forgotten that in this context there was no respect for human rights. Discrimination and abuse of human rights was the main trait.

Therefore, working as a journalist on the upcoming elections may make the two main ruling parties of Sudan, the international community, citizens and watchdogs understand what the Sudanese people want and what changes are wanted to be done in order to bring long-term peace in the country. Like any other job that one decides on, reporting as a journalist in Sudan currently sometimes makes me excited. As a Sudanese reporter I am happy with the mere fact that, despite some threats that interfere with the process, the country is experiencing a democratic change. I thus attribute this success to reporting on election.

The reality is that reporting on the upcoming elections in Sudan is a significant work. However, for the sake of bringing peace and since a man by nature is mandated to work, the challenges I experience in the field of journalism become part of my life. One of the main challenges is the high rate of illiteracy and ignorance due to the long wars, especially the ignorance of some senior government officials and citizens that make accessibility to information hard. Sometimes because of other hardships, as a journalist one ends up not getting the right information or even any at all. This limits effective reporting in the field of the elections and even others. Therefore, all the more the success of the reporting on the upcoming elections must not be minimized and should be a mile stone in the history of the country.