THE BAPTISM OF AUSTIN DEMBY: WHAT WAS HE THINKING?
So let’s try and make some sense of how the great Dr. Austin Demby of Sierra Leone and the United States lost FIVE HUNDRED US DOLLARS and at the same time cast a little shadow over his judgment by cooperating with the most stupid of criminals in this country. From what we’ve read so far from all accounts including that of Demby himself, he received a call from a man claiming to be an authority in the Sierra Leone parliament, of a committee which was due to interview him to determine his fitness for the job of Minister of Health. The man asked for money to help him bury his so-called dead mother in the southern city of Bo. Demby released the cash and the criminal danced all the way to Lumley Beach with his PEKITO.
Next, Demby assembled his papers, said goodbye to his family and friends in the US and landed in Freetown. According to him, he went to parliament to file his papers and while there he sympathized with the “impersonated” official and to his surprise, the guy thought our potential Health Minister had gone mad. Now, Demby had no choice but to tell the world he had fallen into the hands of a cheap criminal. He would later set the thief up when he made a second request and had him arrested.
Thanks Austin Demby because you may well have helped us take one criminal off the streets – for now, at least. So this is our take on this issue.
1. We don’t know if Demby is the most generous man in the world but five hundred dollars is not small money anywhere in the world. He released that cash to somebody crying on the phone and claiming to be a big man in parliament. Why did Demby not suspect that something was wrong and then ask his friends and family back home to crosscheck?
2. We understand why parliament is so angry over this incident. It creates the impression that people running influential committees ask for cash to help presidential nominees go through confirmation hearings once nominated by Principal. Surely if that guy had simply described himself as an ordinary Sierra Leonean seeking help, Demby would have dismissed him instantly. Yes? There are so many ordinary people needing help that he can’t just be tending to their requests even if he desires to.
3. We are in the COVID-19 pandemic and we in this little corner of the world are hoping vaccines will soon land in our country so we can return to our normal lives. We warn Demby, who is sure to be confirmed, not to pay for vaccines offered on the phone by any pharmaceutical company from Europe, China or the US. Please sir. We want you to be very careful this time. Fake vaccines can cause deaths.
4. We are told the thief is a Researcher at the Maritime Administration of this country. That’s a really difficult place, headed by an arrogant, know-it-all diasporan. Instead of the SLMA now sending the man on leave pending the outcome of his trial, they are getting angry with the media for naming the organization as the home of the thief. How come the arrogant SLMA boss, who has sacked people since taking over, was unable to discover he had a potential thief next door to his Big Man room?
5. We now expect our people on Tower Hill to drill a bit more into Demby to determine the quality of his judgment. He is very intelligent and well-connected in the US and around the world. We will benefit a lot from that, but this small matter of his judgment is important. We will be in parliament for the confirmation hearing.
GOOD MORNING NEW EDSA BOSS: STOP THOSE VANDALIZING
OUR TRANSFORMERS
Operation Restore Electricity is progressing well. We hope that by the end of this year the SEVEN township electricity projects would have been completed. The date for the completion of the CSLG project keeps changing but we MUST finish it this year. We hope the new team at EDSA will convince us they are fit for the job.
We want Alhaji Kanja Sesay to now directly address the nation on the willful destruction of EDSA transformers in and around Freetown because we are fed up seeing these facilities vandalized by either common thieves or people with a political motive. We say a political motive because they know that with massive improvement in electricity it’s easy for the New Direction to go to the people during electioneering and remind them that they’ve never had it so good. The reward would surely be massive votes. So we understand why some would be jittery.
Kanja Sesay and his people should call the media and present a comprehensive report on what is happening with our installations, including the implications in terms of how much money we are losing to such criminal activities and how that is impacting the overall objective of getting electricity into thousands of homes across rural and urban Freetown. Here’s why:
1. It is all good showing those pictures of damaged transformers and complaining about what the criminals are doing to the infrastructure but doing nothing about it is the worst thing ever to happen to this country. We might as well surrender to the criminals.
2. We also don’t understand why after the first few transformers were vandalized, the Energy ministry did not take adequate measures to stop the practice. We say adequate because we believe some actions were taken, including making the public aware about what was happening but surely that hasn’t stopped the criminals from striking again and again.
3. This criminal act brings the idea of why communities have failed to protect vital public properties like those EDSA transformers. People are quick to run to the media to complain about recurrent blackouts but they take no action to protect those installations from the criminals who live in those communities.
PLEASE ENFORCE CIVID-19 RULES, STOP MAKING MONEY
We have just completed two weeks under very severe restrictions placed by NaCOVERC to boost the fight against COVID - 19. Other countries have been in lockdown for weeks, in fact the whole world is fighting the SECOND WAVE to prevent a THIRD WAVE. Powerful countries are vaccinating hundreds of thousands of their citizens. Back home there are no vaccines yet so we have to mask up and do social distancing and our security forces have been asked to enforce that.
We are however been told by ordinary people that our people in uniform are taking money from them instead of enforcing the law or exercising discretion and letting them go when they are found in breach. We know that the vast majority of our officers are good people serving our country but the whole country knows that they have colleagues who are neck deep in corruption. Those colleagues couldn’t care less whether COVID-19 spreads and kills people by the dozens. All they want is money.
We call on senior people in the ranks of our security forces to remove those thieves in uniforms from our streets right now. They are causing serious embarrassment for institutions they represent.
Copyright © 2021 Politico Online
