MORE TIME CAMPAIGN DISTRACTS FROM GRIM REALITIES OF SALONE
After a few weeks of jumping up and down, many in Sierra Leone are coming to terms with the fact that the so-called MORE TIME campaign is only a not-so-clever clever ruse to take our attention away from the vicious and grinding poverty in which the majority of us live. In the last eight years, a few select people have become filthily wealthy - a good many of them, out of nothing but milking from the masses and parading to be representing their interest. Well, because they are somehow connected to power. During the same period poverty has increased, so much so that you begin to forget about the OXFAM report which paints a global picture of 62 men being richer than 3 billion people. Here the figures are even more pornographic.
In fact many of those taking part in the MORE TIME campaign are only collecting their fees not knowing they are huge puns on the political chess board of the RED MOVEMENT. Here are some of the bad news items the RED MOVEMENT is trying to bury under the MORE TIME CAMPAIGN.
1. The national currency, the LEONE is in absolute free-fall against the US dollar in particular. The effect of that can be seen in the cost of living. Things are really hard for the average Sierra Leonean. It can only get worse.
2. Many Red Movement programmes are in really bad shape - road works have stalled, fibre-optics gasping for breath, free health care on life support, small holder commercialisation in oblivion, IB Kargbo's tractorisation completely absent, education in worse condition than at any time since freed slaves landed here, and Mamamah Airport looks like coming into service only at the rapture.
3. A looming power struggle that would make the puerile factional fighting in the Green Movement look like child's play reaching boiling point in a few months.
4. Auditor General's damning conclusion about the way Ministries, Departments and Agencies are managing - sorry MISMANAGING - our money and a whitewashed Ebola corruption report.
5. NRA people have gone mad and are obsessed with meeting their artificial deadlines by taxing and over-taxing triple-taxing the same people daily. They close down offices and within a few days they run to a few newspapers to announce that they have met their targets. Yet duty waivers galore for some murky characters we know.
LEGALISING MARIJUANA AND SIGNING CALLIE WEED SONG IN SALONE
If the More Time campaign is as impossible as Sierra Leone becoming another Singapore in 10 years, the Legalise Marijuana campaign is as easy to succeed as SLPP is ready to self-destruct. The only problem we have is that those behind the Legalise Marijuana campaign made a really false and unproductive move by going to the Constitutional Review Committee to ask that a clause legalising marijuana be inserted in the constitution, a truly false move. Legalising Marijuana is not a matter for the constitution. It is for the government to simply draw up a bill and take it through parliament. Marijuana legalisation has a strong case to make. Read below:
1. Marijuana is already widely consumed throughout Sierra Leone by people across all age groups and social class. So why should we bury our heads in the sand on this issue? We will end up criminalising half the young people of this country soon.
2. If we legalise marijuana, then the NRA will meet their artificial targets with real ease. Let's tax the INTERNATIONAL HERB and smile all the way to the bank.
3. There are whole communities around Freetown in which the marijuana business provides food for the hundreds of people there. The police pretend as if they have no idea the trade is flourishing in rural Freetown. Are we going to deprive those jobless and hungry Sierra Leoneans of their daily bread?
4. The US state of Colorado is far away from Sierra Leone but our Legalise Marijuana campaigners are easily pointing at that good example of marijuana legalisation as a model to adopt out here. They've not told the full story of Colorado but it's a good case to make.
5. Frankly, why should any politician risk falling out with 60% of the young people of this country who think marijuana makes them super? To go to State House you need votes guys. We may even consider adopting the Culture song titled CALLIE WEED SONG from the album More Culture as our national anthem. Why not? After all worse things are being done by some of those who lead us, so what they heck!
STINKING WATER FLOWING ON PADEMBA ROAD FOR THE LONGEST TIME
We are not Engineers but we find it unbelievable that for years we are completely unable to deal with the disgrace of rotten water flowing freely between the squatter camp at Pademba Road and Campbell Street junction. And the general filth around an important and open place like PWD Junction. All the people who matter in this country pass through that place to and from work but either they drive at top speed and are therefore unlikely to see the mess or they are simply pretending all things are bright and beautiful with all creatures great and small. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
We cannot also understand why the Freetown City Council - the most useless of all local councils in Sierra Leone - or the government itself continues to maintain that disgraceful place of human misery in the former works compound. Is that the way to treat fellow Sierra Leoneans? When was the last time any person in authority visited that place to see how the KARAOKE minister's idea of a transit camp has turned that place into a free-for-all den for drugs and other anti-social activities?
Those people were simply dumped there and having lost all hope, they are hanging in, praising De Pa. For how much longer can we continue to have that shame of a squatter camp in that place. Before that camp was set up, there was no problem with such rotten water flowing along Pademba Road. That's a fact! That camp must go. We have just re-located flood victims, why not also relocate the inmates of that camp right now? It's relocation time. We are all heading for the area around Mamamah Airport project site.
GREAT BERNIE SPEAKS ON SAFE ABORTION BILL BUT...?
Great Bernie, head of the Green Movement (sorry what’s the colour when you combine green and red again? hahaha!). Anyway, she heads something on Mount Olympus and was on AYV television last weekend talking about the troubled abortion bill that De Pa has asked them to reconsider. passing the buck which no longer stops where it should stop when it comes to real core issues! Thanks to political correctness. hahaha! We really liked Bernie's explanation as to what the bill intends to achieve. She was fantastic.
We don't agree with all the sections of that bill, but Bernie gave us some hope that some reasoning went into the whole project. And this exercise with religious leaders coming to the parliament for discussions geared towards some amendments, what is that meant to achieve when the religious leaders are so opposed to taking life under any circumstances? Let's forget about that and send the bill to De Pa for signature right now. Or cant the speaker sign it into law as the constitution says - since it got overwhelming sup[port in the House? As we write illegal abortions are taking place and lives are being lost. When our religious leaders deliver sermons, they concentrate on praising politicians and making unwarranted political statements in support of whosoever is in power. Let's get the bill signed into law.
While watching Bernie speak, we noticed three things in that office where the interview was done.
1. We saw a picture of the Latin American revolutionary, Ernesto Che Guevara. We tried very hard but failed to see the connection between Bernie and Che. Could it be then that Bernie actually had some revolutionary spirit in her before she came to parliament? We ask because here speeches in parliament and voting patterns are anything but revolutionary. REACTIONARY!!!!
2. We also noticed an unusually large crucifix hanging on the wall. It suggests two things to us:
a. That Bernie is a devout Christian
b. That Bernie is simply being cautious because in an uncertain world, Christians must have Jesus Christ with them always especially when they are betraying humanity and need restraint if at all they can be restrained.
3. Frankly Bernie looked very beautiful and powerful. There was nothing like that Yoruba-style head tie. Just a simple African hair-do. Well done Bernie.
SLFA ORDERS WAFA TO GO TO CONGRESS: ARE WE DREAMING OR WHAT?
Here we definitely have a case of a group of people claiming to be running the Sierra Leone Football Association being told to HEAL THEMSELVES FIRST before thinking about others. Even in a church, the priests eat the bread first before sharing loaves with others. How can an SLFA that hasn't gone to congress for the last three years order one of its affiliates to do so with such arrogance?
Maybe WAFA should simply ask SLFA to also go to congress and be accountable to their membership or fully comply with a presidential order. Hiding under corrupt FIFA will not help. Let's hang it here for now - Act 1 scene 1.
(C) Politico 19/01/16
