PUTIN MEETS AFRICA IN SOCHI: WHAT DEALS FOR SALONE?
As Putin’s big event comes to an end we’ve been hearing a lot about deals being signed with African countries and debts being written off. We’ve heard about deals on nuclear plants to be constructed in some African countries to boost energy production and all that. Please, we know we badly need energy to boost economic productivity in this country but we don’t want any nuclear plants on this soil. No such deals please.
We don’t know how much money we owe that heavily sanctioned country but cancelling debts is not a bad idea. Let them cancel Africa’s debts. We also don’t know how much Russia’s ties with the Republic of Guinea is helping the old dictator in our backyard in his fight to stay beyond his constitutional mandate and jail his opponents in the process but we on this side of the Atlantic are allergic to that kind of behavior.
We are hoping that Principal will address the media upon his return and share the documents concerning any deals signed with specific reference to Sierra Leone with us. The devil is always in the detail.
Anyway, we hope Principal and wife had a good stay in Russia.
WHO CARES WHETHER CHOITHRAM’S HOSPITAL IS A CHARITY OR NOT?
So for the last few days social media in Sierra Leone has been boiling with critical comments about Choithram’s hospital being a charity or not. Apparently the Indian Vice President who visited this country recently tweeted something that seemed to suggest Choithram’s was indeed a charity or at least does some charity work in Sierra Leone.
We’ve been observing from the sidelines all this while until the hospital management found it necessary to tell the media they were only a Memorial Trust not a charity in the sense in which many in those Sierra Leonean media chat rooms chose to understand it – meaning any Sierra Leonean can walk in and be treated free of cost, because Choithram’s is a charity. The only charity work we know the Choithram’s Memorial Trust for is their annual scholarships for school pupils. We’ve not heard about that in a long while.
Now that we are clear about who they really are, why not turn our fire towards our own hospitals – Connaught, Ola During and all the others around the country? Here’s why.
1. Only a handful of our people who can afford the cost go to Choithram’s. The vast majority of Sierra Leoneans are found in our own hospitals. Why are we not always talking about conditions in those facilities?
2. Why are we not talking about the needless maternal deaths at Ola During or indeed the stealing of babies there?
3. Why are we not talking about how user fees are slowly driving people away from our hospitals straight into the arms of quacks, sometimes with disastrous consequences?
4. We know that Connaught is not doing badly at all but the hygiene conditions in some of what we use to call satellite hospitals left much to be desired. In at least one of them that is fully reconstructed now we saw rats and cockroaches around and the toilets were simply crazy. Why are we not talking about that?
5. What about those free health care drugs that are constantly being stolen by Sierra Leoneans? Don’t we care about how their action affects our women and children?
CARIBBEANS DEPORTED FROM AMERICA END UP IN FREETOWN
So how did two Caribbean guys deported from Trump country end up behind bars at the CID in Freetown? We’ve been in touch with these guys through our contacts for several weeks now. Apparently they were deported alongside several Sierra Leoneans from Trump country weeks ago. The real Sierra Leoneans were processed and sent home to their cassava leaves and krain-krain while the two Caribbean guys, obviously so far away from home were given temporary shelter at the CID.
We understand our foreign ministry is working the phones and passing papers here and there to help these people return home. But surely we should inevitably ask the question how it was that the Caribbean guys were deported to this country on Sierra Leonean papers prepared by our embassy in Trump country. We have seen electronic copies of their emergency traveling certificates and there are certain interesting materials on them. Maybe we should do the following:
1. Quickly re-arrest all those recently deported from Trump country and screen them properly. We just want to be sure that no foreigners found their way into good old Sierra Leone and are living here illegally.
2. We should also check what happens at our embassy out there when our people are being prepared for deportation. We are really concerned about just how those two foreigners were sent here on Sierra Leonean papers.
3. Having discovered they are not Sierra Leoneans why not send them back to Trump country or their own countries? They have family there.
4. Would we be reading too much into this to suggest that it is very possible that some Sierra Leoneans may have been mistakenly deported to other countries in this same way?
5. By the way, how many Sierra Leoneans are now lined up for deportation from Trump country? We keep getting scary figures. All we can say is, when immigration people turn up at your door to deport you please cooperate with them. You are welcome back home. Long live Mama Salone!
SLFA QUEEN TO PROFIT FROM SQUABBLING STAKEHOLDER COALITION
On the surface of things the coalition put together by Rodney Michael for the last SLFA election that controversially brought the queen to power is still intact. Scratch the surface a bit and something unexpected will emerge. The coalition is looking shaky and that may well play into the hands of the queen and her supporters who have been working hard to break the coalition that guaranteed 90% of the 47 delegates of the SLFA congress.
Some of the planks in that coalition are falling apart. For example Kanaseiu and Kasho-Holland Cole are no longer at WAFA and the organization is swinging like a pendulum waiting to be trapped on one side of the fence. How can WAFA suspend their own member for standing up for the interests of winner of their own league who are waiting to enter the Premier League? That makes zero sense to any serious observer.
A few days ago we were briefed by somebody who was a strong pillar in that coalition. We left the briefing convinced that person was there for the taking. We heard uncomplimentary things about some of the people in the coalition and the possibility of things falling apart to the advantage of those people who would issues a directive in the morning and then issue a disclaimer by night fall.
Many lovers of the game who have had to wait all these years for the elective congress to throw the controversially elected executive out of Kingtom are already expressing alarm at the prospect of FOUR or SIX more years of confusion and under-performance.
Make no mistake, if the coalition does not get its acts together by Christmas, they will fail woefully. Not everybody can lead.
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