WHO WOULD WANT TO POLITICIZE KAMARAINBA’S CASE
Since news of Mohamed Kamarainba Mansaray’s alleged indecent advances on a 15 year-old Kono school girl surfaced on social media late last week, the rumour mill has not eased on its throttling. In homes, market places and public vehicles it has become the favourite discussion people are so deeply absorbed in. You even hear some conspiracy theorists giving their own version and interpretation of events. And even more pathetic is the apparent attempt by some people to make it look like a political ploy, which we absolutely reject.
The suspect is indeed the leader of Alliance Democratic Party (ADP) but the matter he is faced with has nothing to do with politics.
The girl’s father approached the police and filed a complaint against Kamarainba who initially dodged police instructions to report for questioning and balked for a couple of days before turning himself in to the Criminal Investigations Department of the police, for questioning. With Principal and his administration so focused on the rolling out of development projects that the easing of the COVID -19 measures has provided them with the opportunity to do now, one could hardly figure out just what political score would this administration achieve by contriving sexual penetration allegations against Kamarainba.
The truth is that serious charges were made against him by an ordinary citizen concerned about the politician’s private dealing with his daughter who is a minor, plain and simple. In more enlightened Western societies, the Kamarainba issue would have generated much more public concern for the girl and very little thought of his political lineage. So his political background should have no direct bearing on what he is being investigated for at the moment. Parents should instead be encouraged to come forward and report individuals, irrespective of status or influence, suspected of sexually abusing their girls.
With Sierra Leone gaining notoriety for unprecedented cases of often violent sexual abuse of minors, the introduction of the sexual offences court could not have happened at a more appropriate time. Kamarainba has got all the opportunity now to prove his innocence.
LUNSAR, TOMBO, NOW MAKENI: TOTALLY NEEDLESS LOSS OF LIVES
People are still on trial for bloody riots in Tombo and Lunsar where a few young people were killed, some wounded and public and private properties very badly damaged. In Tombo, even a government-owned clinic was destroyed over something like fishing rights. What is the connection between the two? The police station in Lunsar was attacked by people who would still turn up there the next day to ask for help when their rights are violated. We still can’t understand why some people so easily destroy public property.
Now Makeni has been added to the list. We have heard a lot about what happened or what did not happen to trigger such really deadly riots. Latest counts say FIVE people were killed. At the center of it all was the decision of the Ministry of Energy to move a generator used only as back up source of power in Makeni over to the airport town of Lungi that has been in darkness for weeks, even months. The ministry says local leaders were consulted and they agreed for the transfer to be done.
Those who took to the streets for two days say they had no idea about any such consultation and the government was about to end their uninterrupted power supply. With all of this in the background, we have some issues to put on the table even as Principal has dispatched a delegation to the town to engage with political and community leaders as a first step to finding out what actually triggered the riots and the needless loss of lives.
1. Is there nothing like peaceful protest in Sierra Leone? Without attempting to justify the action of the police in using live fire, why was it necessary to pelt stones at the police and threaten to burn down the whole EDSA compound from which Makeni enjoys electricity throughout? Why was the regional office of the ruling party attacked and thrashed by people demonstrating to stop an electricity generator being taken away?
2. What were local leaders doing when the riots started that evening? Surely they had enough time to have prevented those riots from spilling over into the next day. If what we are hearing now is true, how come the local authorities who worked with the ministry on the transfer of that generator failed to inform the public leading to all the uninformed comments about the generator that we heard from people on the streets in Makeni on the second day of the riot?
3. We need the police to explain to this country what their rules of engagement really are in such situations. We always complain when the shoot people dead in riots but we want them to help us understand under which conditions they open fire and who in the SLP would normally order them to.
4. Social Media appear to have filled the vacuum created by those local authorities who collected per diems but failed to carry out their tasks. They agreed for the machine to be temporarily re-located but then failed or refused to tell their people and prepare for such. We have listened to some voice notes released on social media in the hours leading to that event. They are a total disgrace.
GEARING UP FOR ANOTHER WASSCE IN SIERRA LEONE
Our children are preparing for the WASSCE once again after the disruption caused by the appearance of the coronavirus in Sierra Leone. The children have only a few weeks to tie things up quickly and rush into the examination hall. We wish them all the very best and hope they make us proud.
This year we have seen the Ministry of Education and the Anti-Corruption Commission, ACC issuing statements signaling their readiness to monitor the exams just to destroy the corruption rackets that end up facilitating massive cheating in the exams. We welcome that. We hope the ACC and there will be no cause for the so-called Scorpions from the ACC being called into action, like performing night time raids on private homes and sleazy hide outs to arrest rogue teachers and exam supervisors for cheating.
The last thing we want is for the WASSCE to suffer any further reputational damage. By the way what’s the latest on those teachers who were arrested, paraded at the Cotton Tree and then charged for organizing a cheating syndicate in the last exams? How far are we with that case? We need regular updates on those issues. Or has the ACC lost that case also? They have lost quite a few recently. Anyway, we love the ACC and wish them well.
ARE WE FINALLY TURNING THE TIDE AGAINST RAPE?
So now we have a court specifically set up to try people accused of rape and general sexual abuse of our women and girls. When we come to write the history of our country, covering this period, Principal and his wife Queen Fatima will be commended for leaving no stone unturned to take on and defeat the menace that is about to blight the good reputation of Sierra Leone.
Principal has done a lot since coming to power to fight rape and other forms of abuse of women and girls. He has declared a State of Emergency on that, committed a lot of money to the fight, spoken out frequently about the issue and Queen Fatima has launched one initiative after the other all aimed at tackling this very serious problem but it would appear as if things are not improving in a noticeable way at all. Now having a court specifically set up to try such cases is the latest move by Principal to turn the tide against a group of men operating in small dark corners, raping our women and girls and sometimes subjecting them to other forms of abuse.
While we applaud this move – and we are quite sure millions of Sierra Leoneans are also happy about the setting up of this court, we would like to say a word or two on what we hope to see in this court.
1. We don’t want to see the kind of delays we witness in the existing courts. We hate too many adjournments to accommodate very busy lawyers who take such cases. We should also not pamper state prosecutors who repeatedly come to court to tell magistrates and judges that they were busy looking for their witnesses.
2. The forensic examination report on alleged victims that is normally used in court should be above board. So let’ do a proper FORENSIC LAB right now to complement what the judiciary has just done.
3. Let’s also train the FSU people who normally investigate these cases and pay them reasonably well. The training MUST include dealing with the media. Such cases have massive public interest so they should never be surprised when journalists turn up to ask questions regarding such cases.
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