MEETING IN MAKENI WITH HANDSHAKES AND SMILES
We haven’t seen any official statement – well from the BIG HOUSE or the Office of Kotor Juldeh about the purpose of Kotor’s visit to King Messi’s Palace in the Kingdom of Makeni last week. All we’ve seen are pictures and a short write up from the Red Camp media announcing the visit and a one-hour private meeting between the two men. Maybe Kotor thinks he doesn’t owe us any explanation. We disagree profoundly sir.
Let’s make this clear: we have no problem with Kotor Juldeh meeting King Messi. However since Kotor did not find it necessary to tell the people what was on the agenda of that meeting or the very purpose of going there, we have to let Kotor know that we have heard a few things from our usually reliable sources. While we wait for corroboration, we wish to make the following case for the good people of Sierra Leone:
1. The people will NOT ACCEPT any softening of the robust posture of the anti-corruption in their drive to bring back all the monies stolen from the national coffers.
2. The people want the Commission of Inquiry to reach its logical conclusion and its imperative recommendations carried out without delay.
3. The people want King Messi to apologize to the nation for refusing to honour the memory of his late predecessor Alhaji Tejan. That was a huge blunder – or even the Bintumani Peace Meeting.
4. The dangerous precedent should not be set where big men are allowed to handpick the members of their security detail. The really close ones should be excused but this idea that Messi gets to decide who the state deploys as security guard to his Palace is unacceptable. Let’s give him his constitutional due but not capitulate to him. Is he setting up a private militia with state money or what? We are just curious!
5. The people say Messi must ACCEPT that they have given the presidency to another person. Messi must retire from politics and write his memoir. The doors of Bradford University are open.
TEACHER IN THE EYE OF THE STORM OVER RAPE COMMENTS
So we are still waiting for Teacher to react publicly to comments attributed to him that appear to justify rape. Reaction to what he is alleged to have said at a public function has taken over social media and even in the mainstream with some journalists and feminists calling for his immediate resignation.
We know for sure that ministerial resignations are almost unheard of in Sierra Leone so it wouldn’t start with Teacher. That much we are sure about. In fact it would take Principal himself to compel a resignation because he has powers to end the nonsense within minutes.
We spent the last few days digging for Teacher’s original comments without luck. We can assure our readers that if Teacher did make those comments, we will eventually get the raw stuff. The original material will turn up in some corner of our extensive contacts list. Trust Twitter.
For now we wish to say something about how people like teacher should comport themselves in public:
1. We are quite sure people like Teacher would normally have a prepared speech for big occasions like the one he addressed. We are also sure his staff would NEVER put those lines into such a speech. Please even as a Teacher if you can’t do things ad-libitum don’t try it. Stay on your script.
2. How can Teacher make such comments when his boss in sending people to jail for life for rape? Isn’t that a clear challenge to Principal?
3. What does Teacher really think he was doing? Those comments attributed to him are not made by anybody these days even in the privacy of their bedroom. Walls have ears you know and we are in the 21st century.
4. What does Teacher really think is the connection between a woman being scantily dressed and a depraved idiot raping her? Absolutely no connection! What was Teacher doing trying to make that connection?
5. We warn Teacher that if he doesn’t address the allegations now and he decides to ride out the current storm, when we eventually land that recording, we will re-open the debate by publishing the gory details and then join calls for his sacking from the New Direction train. See you soon.
C4APC CLAIMS VICTORY IN KONO ELECTIONS BUT WHAT LESSONS?
The political party of Konoland may be facing a serious identity crisis because Chief Sidikie has inexplicably decided to apply his SNAKE BORN SNAKE theory but today they appear to have held their ground against the force of the New Direction in their stronghold. Figures show they have retained a local council seat in a by-election.
However take a close look at the figures from NEC and see how much ground Chief Sidikie has lost since one year ago. With the Mother SNAKE not in the race, their supporters wholly backed Baby SNAKE in this election with a heavy turnout. The results are so close that the average C4APC supporter should be asking just what’s happening to their organization in their homeland. They can’t talk about anything outside their homeland.
They will be very scared to have to contest another by-election any time soon as long as their identity crisis continues to fester on account of Chief Sidikie’s political ambivalence, underlined by naked opportunism under the SNAKE BORN SNAKE theory.
Their attitude to two recent national events has hit the credibility of C4APC really hard. We are talking about their refusal to attend Bintumani III and the launch of the Tejan Kabbah Foundation after last minute intervention from Chief Sidikie to apparently attempt to thwart things. No faction in their new C4APC party can convince anybody otherwise about their total subservience to Mother SNAKE. They are effectively C4APC.
C4APC should imagine what would happen if Mother SNAKE decided to come out of self-imposed political hibernation and run in another by-election in Konoland. It will be simple vote-sharing between Mother and Child, leaving the field open to New Direction to march in. Long live C4APC.
DRAINAGE SYSTEM NEAR EASTERN POLICE IS A REAL SHAME
How long is it going to take all our highly qualified engineers at the SLRA to fix that drainage system by the Clock Tower near Eastern Police station? Whenever it rains the whole place is messed up with debris caused by small scale flooding. We complain a lot about over-crowding and people avoiding the footpath along Kissy Road, this may be part of the reason. We drove through last weekend and saw some work being done but we don’t think we are anywhere close to a solution to a problem that has caused so much structural damage to that part of the city. SLRA may have to do something drastic to deal with that situation.
1. Copy the example of what is happening now to the lower end of King Harman Road to Main Motor Road. That place was as problematic as the Eastern Police area. When the ongoing work is completed people might celebrate. We want to celebrate Eastern Police area in that same manner.
2. City Council must do more than putting photo-shopped images of Mayor of the Sun visiting here and there and deal with the problem of all sorts of domestic waste being dumped inside the gutters, sometimes in broad daylight.
3. For how long are we going to have military police officers controlling vehicular and pedestrian movements in that area? At which point would wardens from the SLRSA and the Sierra Leone Police resume their responsibility in that area?
4. And while on this drainage stuff maybe we should have checked how much the work now being done by the military has disrupted criminal activity around that place.
5. We should also check how the presence of the military has affected the daily flow of people into Eastern Police station. If there has been any drop in that number it may also have affected the happiness of the Moigbeh people out there in more ways than one.
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