By Umaru Fofana
In the last few years many things have eroded our standing as a country that is transparent and ruled by law without favour. Ebola funds were misappropriated virtually without consequence - in stead of taking action our parliament chose to audit an audit, and the rest as they say is history. Public officials have been recycled even though some of them had been sacked for corruption or without publicly stated reasons yet everyone had some idea why they had been relieved of their duties.
We have had presidential orders - both directly and apparently - for journalists to be arrested and to allow the Senegalese fugitive Ibrahim Baldeh to leave the country. Buses, reportedly 100 of them, procured under dubious circumstances and handled in a manner akin to a students’ union government minister dancing on campus after a foreign mission doled out a generator to them.
Three major companies - London Mining Company, African Minerals and ADDAX - went under without any investigation let alone consequence, despite huge public money having been spent on them under the cloak of tax concessions. A recent proposed Lebanon waste dumping scheme for which only poor civil servants in the foreign ministry were roughed up. The country has been without a works minister since the ascension of Jesus.
Our constitution has sometimes been handled as it has pleased those in authority to the extent that a Speaker of Parliament was removed without reason, and a new one brought in after a rushed-through amendment of the constitutional provisions. That, despite an ongoing constitutional review process having been cited when some other laws had been asked to change such as the criminal defamation law. The outrageously expensive cost of the expansion of Wilkinson Road which gets flooded at the slightest rainfall.
The refusal by the authorities to reduce the pump price of fuel despite the plummet in the global price of oil to its lowest in generations. Etc. Etc. I know my favourite English Language teacher, the late Rev DS Junissa would tell me not to repeat “et cetera”, but I just thought I needed to use it there for emphasis sakes because of the innumerability of the issues we have allowed to pass after a brief expression of outcry when they have happened. I call it the SPRINT MENTALITY. Marathon does not seem to be in our DNA as a people to continue agitating for what is right. We take few steps for a few days and stay still and call it quits.
The political leaders have noticed this SPRINT MENTALITY in Sierra Leoneans and are apparently making full use of it. They can now afford to do some despicable things and allow the public to roar through some SMSes on a few radio programmes for a while for they know people will do so only for a few days.
These days when things happen it is common for the public to turn as ask thus: “What are the journalists saying about this”, “Why are the journalists not talking about it?” That is being very unfair to the Fourth estate of the Realm. And depending on who is in power then, the same people who ask those questions will accuse journalists of siding with the other side when their favoured politicians are held to account.
That said, I do agree that often we the journalists have allowed the politicians to set the agenda for us. They bribe some of us and let us do what they want us to do. Some do succumb, which is a shame. But some others definitely refuse and stand up. While I admit that the agenda keeps changing and being changed so frequently that we often lose sight of the ball and let the clamour peter out easily, it will be unfair to ask what journalists are doing or where they are. I throw back the question thus: where is the public?
The trouble is that the average Sierra Leonean has a very short memory span. Or they are compromised or cowed - including, more tragically - even the middle-class. It happened yesterday, it was very bad and even abhorrent. But that was yesterday. Today is today and GOD DAE. Businesspeople are so cocooned and enmeshed in their making profit that they couldn't care less if the nation bled - so long the survival of their own business was guaranteed. That is what makes dictatorship develop out of even the most democratic of persons. They all recoil into their cocoon, mind their own businesses and ignore the business of the public.
Our roads are bad, we shout for a day or two and keep quiet because some of us can afford a 4x4 to cope with the bumps and humps. The state television is rendered useless, we hiss at their biased and anti-public interest and politically biased programmes for a few hours and we install satellite TV at our homes. If piped water is unavailable we don't challenge it or if we do we only complain in street corners and bars and we buy a water tank and install it and dig a bore hole to supply it. When electricity becomes erratic we buy a generator. And on and on and on. What that does is not solve the problem - rather it postpones it and worsens it.
Apparently because the country’s first president rose through a trade union platform, no efforts seem to be being spared to emasculate pressure groups. Their elections are infiltrated and influenced - from students’ unions to other unions and organisations and associations. Consequently unions hardly seek the interests of their members let alone the general public. They are compromised!
When Sierra Leoneans feel hard done by the manner in which they are governed or are unhappy with some government policies, they have developed the culture of complaining for only a few days - without harping on the issue or sustaining the campaign. And in all of this they hardly express any outcry when the journalists they expect to change the country for them and be their ventriloquists, are picked up. When that happens it is all left to the journalists themselves to stand by their own. But arrest the politicians who are responsible for their woes and they will throng the streets in their support or defence. And this is not about illiteracy only, it is all about the lack of a proper education and an old mentality that has been reawakened in recent years - worship your leaders. Something that is made worse by the SHORT MENTALITY mentality.
(C) Politico 03/0316
