WE MUST ADMIRE TOLERANT DEMOCRACIES IN THE WEST: Here's why?
SCENARIO ONE: A war veteran scales the fence at the White House in the USA for God knows what. But Obama and family were not harmed at all.
SECNARIO TWO: An ordinary man in the English city of Leeds crashes into Prime Minister Cameron as he left a meeting. The PM is a bit shaken but he turned up in parliament and cracked jokes about the incident.
In the first scenario, the man is being prosecuted with all his rights scrupulously observed. The attention is inevitably on the secret service that is responsible for the security of the occupants of the White House. The head of that institution has been forced to resign.
In the second scenario, the man has been cautioned and allowed to go home. There are now calls, not very loud ones, for some inquiry into how a man jogging along the street could get so close to a powerful politician like David Cameron without permission.
We discussed the issue at some joints in Freetown and came out with how things would have been handled in Good Old Freetown.
1. Certainly, the man would have been brought to court on 100 counts including some very dangerous ones like treason and this and that, after two weeks at the CID.
2. He would certainly be denied bail and kept on remand for...well we don't know how long
3. Meanwhile the usual Spin Doctors would be on radio programs and newspapers suggesting that in fact it was a Green Movement plot against De Pa hatched in a hotel in Bo, or somewhere...
4. Many other people would be picked up including the friends and possibly family members of the man
5. No police officer would be held to account. For Example: the inquiry in Bo over the wounding of Maada Bio, named police officers, politicians and other community leaders as being responsible for the breakdown in law and order that led to the incident. The politicians and community leaders were arrested, locked up and eventually put through a trial. No police officer was questioned and they remained in post. In fact they gave radio interviews and made political statements unbecoming of democratic police officers.
In good democracies there's good governance with the RULE of LAW at the heart of it. Police officers make no political statements and people don't panic easily. We lie? Hahahahahahahahahahahahah.
PIGS AND STRAY DOGS CAPTURE FREETOWN: WHERE'S MAYOR BABABODE?
We are very lucky in this country that there is no science right now to suggest that pigs and dogs carry the Ebola virus. Were that the case, the whole Freetown would be in permanent lockdown because there are thousands of stray dogs and pigs roaming Freetown to infect us all. We want somebody to challenge us when we say that Freetown is worse today than it was under Chairman Fergusson's Committee of Management and Herbert George William's Morgan Heritage party.
Ask any resident of this city and they will tell you how fed up they are with Bababode's administration. We really need help here: Somebody please tell us which modern city administration in this 21st century world allows pigs to roam so freely around? What about the hundreds of thousands of stray dogs carrying rabies all over the place? And Bababode says he is fighting Ebola. Come on sir, Freetown hasn't moved one step since you took over. We challenge you to prove us wrong. We will overwhelm you with evidence of your inability to deliver.
We've been inundated with requests for our pictures of pigs and stray dogs having their picnics in Babbabode's Freetown. Defeating Bababode is the easiest political milestone to achieve since Aristotle. To be honest, we can't wait for 2016.
The complacency of the 444 machine and the tenure of a mayor who thinks the people owe him something will end in 2016.
OPERATION PAY YOURSELF AT SLBC ON EVE OF Dr. ORMAN'S DEPARTURE
At some point we shall have to force Dr. Orman to give us airtime so that we can use our TV to ask serious questions about what is going on at our so-called state broadcaster. For now, we can say that Operation Pay Yourself is very much underway as DrOrman is being forced out of office. Hardly a day goes by now without us hearing about workers stealing parts of what is left of SLBC. The other day it was fuel, now we've heard that thieves broke into a very sensitive office and stole computers, a TV set and some files.
If the CID is going to allow political pressure to block prosecutions for crimes committed at our state broadcaster, we serve notice now that they are putting themselves in the people's line of fire. It cannot be right that workers at an underperforming place like SLBC should go on the rampage and steal government property just because a transition is looming.
NgorMinah is in charge of the Board of Trustees and all of this is happening on his watch. Why is he so silent? He holds office on our behalf and we can say now that we are totally unhappy with the performance of the SLBC, in fact, we are ashamed to associate ourselves with biased, lazy, politically-correct, unethical journalism, made worse by unbridled stealing.
There are many decent young people in that place who are being made to look bad. We hate that. The solution is for Ngor to quickly end the mess at SLBC by hastening the departure of DrOrman whose leadership has failed and cleaning up the place.
Our spotlight is now firmly on the CID. We want charges to be brought against those thieves right now.
HOW TO RUN A STRUGGLING PARASTATAL IN MAMA SALONE
We really don't know where we are with our many parastatals. The privatisation commission was established to help put the failing institutions back on the rails. In fact to take them through a process that would release government from the burden of bailing them out all the time. We can round them up quickly but such general comments would make no difference to what we want to say.
The question is: how do you run a struggling parastatal in Mama Salone? We have some lessons from a parastatal in an Island somewhere off the coast on Mama Salone.
1. As the General Manager, make sure you have a great relationship with the chairman of your board. Some board chairmen normally don't have any other job to do. So fix a room for him in the parastatal, give him a plasma TV...just make him happy.
2. Once you've sealed that, proceed to appoint your children and their friends into senior positions. Forget about some people who like grumbling about nepotism, especially journalists. They are simply jealous.
3. As your term draws to an end, run to the chairman of the board and tell him it's payback time. Ask for an extension for exactly the same period your potential successor has left on the job. Don't allow him to succeed you because he knows too much and could destroy your plan to keep a national office in your family.
4. Please don't pay too much attention to the health of the parastatal or how much benefit your real shareholders - the people of Sierra Leone get from their institution as long as you are happy.
5. Finally, never forget to tell the whole country that you are a patron of the ruling party. That's very important in times like these. Well done Mr. General Manager!
© Politico 30/10/14
