SOME POLITICAL PARTIES ARE MISSING ON THE GROUND
Bye-election after bye-election we notice that some political parties, including those in parliament are never on the ballot. The two main guys manage to turn up all the time but our other friends are always absent. We deserve some explanation from them.
In the last two bye-elections we witnessed the re-emergence of the RUFP and there is now a steadily growing tendency for people denied party symbols to run as independent candidates. That’s a good thing in the sense that if those independent people manage to take seats like they did in Kailahun and Pujehun in 2018 or even cause the defeat of our traditional parties, the process of selecting candidates will receive a serious reality check.
We have also noticed that many parties have no offices outside Freetown. Even the offices in Freetown for some of the parties look totally abandoned. We are not experts in law but isn’t it a requirement for national parties to have offices in all the administrative regions of this land that we love? And isn’t it the business of the PPRC to make sure our parties comply?
Our politicians are going all over the country and on the media – traditional and new calling for laws to be respected but from the look of things they are violating a crucial portion of our laws and we make bold to tell them that we consider that a calculated disrespect to the good people of Sierra Leone and it robs them (the parties) of any ground to stand on and shout about laws being respected or not.
We call on the PPRC to stop this political correctness and immediately call out those that are in violation of the law and set a time frame within which they should regularize their situation otherwise they should be suspended. The PPRC should not allow itself to be blackmailed by cries of political bias by people who don’t want to respect the law.
PPRC has allowed this to go on for too long. It must stop now.
POSTINGS AND RECALLS AT SALONE FOREIGN MINISTRY
The new director general of our foreign ministry is flexing his administrative muscles around the place at last. We know that the Old Chief Minister has a hand in the postings just announced and according to legal requirements we are told Principal approved. In reality though, apart from special cases, he leaves that to his minister of Foreign Affairs.
We are still trying to make sense of the new postings. We are relying, as we always do on our impeccable sources within the foreign ministry. We notice for starters, that there is some small administrative earthquake in our mission in Geneva. When we reached that station our minds went back to that small matter of a social media video that we still have in some corner of the cloud. Old Chief Minister thought that issue was now dead so he could quietly slip this posting and recall through. No way sir!
By the way, what has happened to the other guy in our High Commission in Kenya? We read an article in one of the papers in Nairobi the other day about what happened to somebody on our diplomatic staff there. According to the paper our guy got involved with a hot 23-year-old college student and was taught lessons in the need for emotional restraint even under heavy provocation especially when working in a diplomatic position abroad.
We will return to the administrative and political undercurrents that have resulted in these postings as soon as we are briefed by our absolutely reliable insider source at the foreign ministry. Trust Politico.
UNEASINESS AT NACOVERC AS DRAW DOWN GATHERS PACE
The picture of NACOVERC workers complaining and even demonstrating for their allowances doesn’t look good at all. As we write this we are hearing from some of the workers that some VERIFICATION is taking place across the country for staff that have not been paid for about FIVE MONTHS now. How can anybody explain this?
NACOVERC allows staff to go FIVE MONTHS without pay? The implication is that they have a big bunch of disgruntled staff hanging around to perform a very important function. How about the real risk of those disgruntled guys corrupting the system to keep body and soul together? Are we thinking about that? Could it also be that commitment to the vaccination effort has been affected by this non-payment of allowances?
This is not the first time we are seeing demonstrations at NACOVERC for the same reason. We will soon find out if the big guys at headquarters are receiving their monies regularly because they cannot be happy on this side of the fence while their workers beg for their survival because their allowances are withheld for months.
We are keeping a close eye on the so-called verification exercise. Please pay the workers immediately this is over and give them a Christmas bonus to bring some JOY TO THE WORLD.
TOO MUCH LAWLESSNESS IN SIERRA LEONE PREMIER LEAGUE
We have been told by our usually reliable sources that after the match between Mount Aureol SLIFA and East End Lions just over a week ago, some fans of East End Lions found their way into their team’s dressing room and attacked their players. According to our sources, at least one player was injured. We find it very strange that fans can actually manage to enter the dressing rooms for hostile or friendly reasons.
We believe that slowly but surely the PLB is losing control of this league and hooligans are about to destroy the game. Soon, many fans will be completely put off and would have no alternative but to withdraw from matches.
We can understand when passions fly out of control on the sidelines from time to time but the wounding of an Assistant Referee by fans of Bo Rangers at the stadium in Freetown, the wounding of a Bo Rangers player in Portloko by fans of the victorious team, the verbal assault on an Assistant Referee by Technical officials of East End Tigers and now this attack on East End Lions players by their own fans in their dressing room, sends a very bad signal about our commitment to clean football and our general comportment in
The PLB cannot pretend they are not aware. Their disciplinary committee can find them and take other actions. They have been doing that and violence has only grown in the game. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
Our Premier League Board has lost control of the presidential pavilion; they have no say in the number of security personnel deployed for matches, many times the Red Cross which provides first aid services is never around. That’s so because the PLB has abandoned its responsibility to the clubs. The common denominator between the participating clubs and the PLB is that they both want money more than they care about the welfare of their players and football fans.
Copyright © Politico Online 17/11/21
