CLEANING DAY BLUES AND THE RETURN OF MASADA
After all the confusion and uncertainty, the Nanny State went into full gear last weekend with the so-called National Cleaning Day. It was originally scheduled for two days – Saturday and Sunday. But as it turned out, Christian groups complained that their right to worship would be interfered with if the cleaning continued on their Sabbath day. State House pulled back and announced that Sunday would be for the disposal of the waste collected on Saturday. Then WAEC complained about the total disruption a 6:00 am cleaning exercise would cause their exams. The government pulled back again and announced that cleaning would start at 9:00 am. Then Seventh Day Adventists whose Sabbath falls on Saturday complained but State House refused to listen to them.
It may be because of two reasons: They are either not Sierra Leoneans or they are a small minority who are not able to tilt an election one way or the other. That's very important in De Pa's Sierra Leone – Politics.
We note also that it was during the media blitz organised by State House that we heard something about the return of MASADA to the cleaning business under the supervision of the Freetown Waste Management company. Now we know that the whole struggle between these two outfits and their powerful backers was about access to sanitation money. They have an agreement in place now as to who gets what. Let the carnival go on.
We shall spend this week checking out the final destination of all the rubbish collected on Saturday in the interest of our people. Where else but back in our clogged-up drainages!
We repeat our earlier position that national cleaning days are short-term, feel-good fixes that are good only for propaganda purposes. If our governors still believe in the cleaning day project, then the Attitudinal and Behavioural Change body should now do what we said a long time ago. The people who need their services more are those in authority, not the masses who are victims of bad governance. In fact those are the same people the ABC finds pleasure talking down on all the time.
SO EVEN DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS ARE NOT SPARED? CENSORSHIP GONE MAD?
Minister Samura Kamara who is still wobbling his way into the world of diplomacy has been up to something interesting lately. He's been trying to censor the diplomatic community at a time in the history of the world when nobody, not even in the most powerful countries, can control information flowing from one person to the other or from one part of the world to another. Technology has changed the entire game but Samura Kamara is still behind times.
He recently sent a letter to "diplomatic, consular missions and international organisations" to:
GOSL - "request the latter to kindly cross-check with the ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation, via the usual diplomatic communication channel, all information before communicating to their home country. This is to ensure that all information disseminated are true, accurate and correct…”
POLITICO – You now see why we think it was wrong for De Pa to put in charge of our foreign ministry a man who has spent all his life playing with figures and making bogus growth projections. May be some old diplomatic document stipulates what Samura is trying to pursue, but doesn't this man know this is no longer possible? How is he going to monitor what diplomats and staff of international organisations send abroad anyway? Someone is clueless here.
Samura, please also check all those project proposals Sierra Leoneans send abroad to funding bodies and read how they paint the situation in this country just to raise money. Start with those.
Mr Minister, the idea that only information cleared with your office is "true, accurate and correct" is a pathetic and incurably flawed reasoning. All people will get from your office will be a heavily spun and massaged government perspective, far removed from reality which can only be spurned by anyone serious. Stop this wild goose chase, Mr. Minister. Please tell us what the consequences will be if the American embassy or the British High Commission refused to even countenance this letter.
Throwing out Michael Schulenburg was easy but trying that with a super power will be like De Pa trying to run for a third-term – calamitous.
GOSL - “It has come to the notice of the ministry that certain diplomatic missions are in the habit of requesting direct appointments with MDAs without going through the foreign ministry thus creating an embarrassing situation for the ministry. In the light of the above and in a bid to correct this anomaly, you are kindly asked to channel all appointments for facilitation through the ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation…”
POLITICO - Why can't our minister pilot a bill through parliament to make it legal for all diplomats and staff of international bodies to be electronically tagged before they take up duty here? That will make things easy.
If we should ask, why is De Pa's government suddenly issuing one instruction after another to diplomats? Is there anything we must know as citizens of this great country? We have read a string of recent reports from influential bodies in the West that paint a very bleak picture of life in this land that we love. Is that why the government is targeting the diplomatic community? We pay a lot of money to keep information attachés abroad, what's their job? We ask because instead of pushing the message of Sierra Leone in those countries, they are busy trying to disgrace opposition figures back home. For them every government lackey that attends some nondescript conference abroad either "excels" or is "honoured".
The compensation package that took these attachés to those countries is now a real burden on the taxpayers of Sierra Leone.
SALONE DONATES US$ 1 MILLION TO AU TRUST FUND
First it was Haiti, now it's Mali - Sierra Leone is keeping pace in the international community with its own widow's might donation to international causes. One million dollars is the amount we have donated to the UN trust fund for Mali.
It's a difficult thing to be critical of a humanitarian project like this but we feel compelled to ask this question: what else could we have done with one million dollars for the direct benefit of our people? Well just in case De Pa had decided at the very last minute that he must deal with own domestic problems first, we would have called for him to consider the following as priorities.
a. Rebuild King Jimmy Bridge and compensate the victims of Petito's negligence.
b. Compensate CSE and cancel all road construction contracts awarded to them on grounds of incompetence and laziness. But we wonder how the kickbacks obtained from them by senior government officials will be paid back. LOL!
c. Use it as severance package for the board and staff of the Road Fund Board and disband that irrelevant body.
d. Give to De Pa for him to resume his cash distribution exercise all over Freetown. With the second term now in the bag, De Pa is holding back, thinking about life after State House.
e. One million dollars will go a long way to bring some relief to hundreds of people amputated by rebels and their intellectual backers. Some are in high office today and are trying to scare everybody into erasing that part of our history. No way!
A COMMONER TELLS THE HIDDEN TRUTH ABOUT THE SLFA “ELECTIONS”
The real truth behind the cruel and shameless manipulation of the last Sierra Leone Football Association elections is being revealed by those who executed the plan thinking that Sierra Leone was their farm.
On the most authoritative radio sport programs recently, it was reported that A Commoner told Mohamed Kallon that the only reason he didn't become the president of the FA is that the Red Flag movement is in power and he, Commoner would never allow anyone who wouldn't wear a RED badge to head any institution in Sierra Leone.
Well, we knew all along that there was a political hand behind all the evil things that happened at the SLFA. But we applaud A Commoner's True Confession. Now we understand why he came out of retirement. He had a political job to do at the SLFA. Thank you very much sir.
We have always said that converts can be more fanatical than original members. Even after the defeat of the Green Movement 2007, our Red Movement Crusader attended a post-election meeting to find out why they lost. He was that committed to the Green Movement. Now he is the guy going all over the place persecuting people for belonging to this and that.
We can bet anything we hold dear, that if the Green people returned to power in 2018, our man will be the first to announce his return to the Tokpoi. You think it's the end, but it's just the beginning.
SLBC AGAIN!
Our deepest condolences to the DG of what should be the nation’s pride but has become its Achilles’ heel. He lost his dad. May the old man rest in peace. But we pray that all those who have made SLBC the one-sided disgrace it is today never rest. If they were to rest, may they do so in pieces. They have thrown away professionalism, balance, fairness and honesty to serve all sides in the country’s divides. We cringed last week when the SLBC hosted both the Minister of Sports and his deputy on a news and current affairs programme to talk about the same issue that was a nonissue – the Leone Stars match with Equatorial Guinea. How do you have both men repeating themselves and “buttressing” what either said? It was not only boring but was also a waste of tax payers’ money on the state broadcaster. As for tax payers’ money we do not want to mention the billions that are still said to be unaccounted for. We bet that SLBC is worse off today in the area of balance and professionalism than it was when it was still SLBS. What’s in the name we wonder!
(C) Politico 10/09/13
