The New People Online

Stored in a cupboard in the store of my office is a beautiful round shaped wall clock. The face carries the Palm Tree symbol of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party, SLPP. Also inscribed on it is the motto of the party, “ONE COUNTRY, ONE PEOPLE.” It should have been on display in the waiting room so that it would be visible to visitors, but it hasn’t been simply because the clock cannot be relied on to give the correct time, which reminds me of Mayor George Herbert Williams’s clock at the Eastern police station.

In the awareness times publication of May 2nd, on the front page, Sylvia Blyden the newspaper’s owner, publisher, editor in chief, critic, character assassinator and much more, wrote as follows under the heading, ‘Charles Taylor: Sierra Leone’s Scapegoat.’. “ ….First of all Charles Taylor would not have had impact here if some Sierra Leoneans (mostly from the South-East), had not used the aggrieved Taylor as a tool to help them destroy our country simply because they (Sierra Leoneans) were bitter with Momoh and Steven’s APC regime.” 

There was an amazing article by the Reverend Kabs-Kanu publisher of the APC on-line cocorioko newspaper and also our councilor/counselor to our Permanent Mission to the United Nations as it appeared in the Monday May 14th edition of the African champion newspaper. Readers may recall that I had wondered whether Kabs-Kanu was a Liberian/American citizen or a Sierra Leone/American citizen. And that if he was the former, what was he doing in our Permanent Mission. Instead of a straight “yes” or “No” answer the Reverend gentleman had lashed forth into irrelevant platitudes about my grammar, my apparent Malapropism etc, all deliberately meant as distractions.

Eminent Freetown Lawyer J B Jenkins-Johnston is nobody’s pushover. He is a recognized human rights activist who is not as far as I know, attached to any political party and therefore has the singular advantage of stating his views with candor which he does without deliberately insulting anyone. In recent years Mr. Jenkins-Johnston has expressed strong views on such matters as executive interference with the course of justice, he has given an impartial opinion on controversial interpretations of law and legal proceedings.

As a party in government the All Peoples Congress APC have always done things just as it pleases them regardless of the consequences. There have been many examples of such blatant misuse of authority and if the Jara-Kawusu-Kontehs , the Oswald Hanciles (have you read his blasphemy as he compares Ernest Koroma with Jesus Christ? Oh my God!!,) John Baimba Seseys, (this man, a hitherto effective and highly regarded columnist now stewing up in Beijing and indulgent in dispatching sycophantic praise singing articles back to base) and the Elias Banguras challenge us on this statement we will produce a list of some of the things that they have done with impunity since Christiana Thorpe gave them the results of the 2007 Presidential runoff election.

A famous London Gynecologist during my student days displayed an interesting, sometimes bizarre sense of humour. His theatre sister with whom he had worked for years thought she had heard it all from him. That was until one day when her boss was carrying out an investigative procedure on a patient. After examining the patient he instructed her to go round the corridor to the X-ray department for some photographs. A shocked sister exclaimed in indignation, “Surely  Mr……you’re  not going to let that poor woman walk down the corridor with those instruments hanging between her legs?” to which Mr……..calmly replied, “Woman, for the last 60 years I have gone around with something dangling between my legs and I have come to no harm.” At that, for once the poor sister blushed for the first time.

Most of us who were around and of age at the time could well remember the conditions that ignited and fueled the 11 year rebel war. In fact I would say that we saw it coming. Even today we have not failed to call attention to some of the causes as we see them developing around us. The APC was a cruel regime that silenced its critics not by factual reasoning but by brute use of force. Corruption was rife and in the midst of poverty and deprivation the few selected were amassing wealth and displaying it with amazing vulgarity. 

President Barack Obama of the United States of America has come in for sharp criticism which puts his chance of being reelected next November at risk. This has nothing to do with the current spate of incumbents being displaced by challengers as in Zambia and Senegal and which may happen in France. Current opinion polls put the 44th President way ahead of any of his prospective Republican challengers, which now seems more likely to be Mitt Romney former Governor of Massachusetts. 

The energy sector had from the outset been President Ernest Bai Koroma’s priority; getting Freetown lighted within a specified period had practically become an obsession with his ‘Agenda for Change’. I will go as far as to say that if nothing else worked, there had to be electricity by any means. In the process we had to deal with a most unwelcome scandal early in the Presidency. I refer to the notorious Income Electric contract which should have cost Haja Hafsatu Kabbah her job, but which in the usual APC way of dealing with such matters only pushed her to the other side from where she finally reached her Waterloo.

On September 17, 2007 the chairperson of the National Electoral Commission NEC Christiana Thorpe announce d the results of the runoff Presidential elections which gave victory to the opposition candidate Ernest Bai Koroma who is currently in the final months of his five year term as President of Sierra Leone. That decision provoked a lot of controversy and even as of now the matter is awaiting a ruling before the courts. NEC had been announcing the results, albeit very slowly especially from the SLPP strongholds of the south east, a matter for which the party’s Presidential candidate raised concerns with the Commission to which the latter failed to respond.