HON. SPEAKER BUNDU, PARLIAMENT AND OUR MINISTERS
For the second time we have allowed something we consider a nonissue to occupy a place in the national conversation to the extent that the GREAT SPEAKER of our Parliament – the THIRD most powerful man in Sierra Leone – has been compelled to use precious parliamentary time to address it. We are talking about whether Government Ministers should refer to themselves – or cause to be referred to – as HONORABLE MINISTER this or that. Ordinarily these are matters for the different HOUSE STYLES of various news outlets. But from reading our newspapers in this country or listening to the broadcasting stations, one comes to the conclusion that there is zero house style or where they exist at all, they are widely ignored. Anyway that’s for our MEDIA WATCH column.
We don’t have enough time and space to pick through the Speaker’s conclusions for now but we know that what happened in parliament the other day was an attempt by the big guys on Tower Hill to get ordinary people to stop referring to Government Ministers as HONOURABLE. The truth is this comes from a long way in the history of this country especially since SIAKA STEVENS, the man who did everything to eliminate his opponents, consolidate power around himself and stay in office for SEVENTEEN years and on his way out put the country in the hands of his boy.
Actually, we are not sure whether what the speaker said in parliament will change anything on the streets of Freetown and in those waiting rooms at Youyi Building. Here’s why:
1. Calling Ministers HONOURABLE this and that makes them feel good about themselves. And if that will get a few Leones out of their pockets or get them to quickly process some document, then sorry Mr. Speaker, this thing will continue.
2. Let’s be honest, did parliament really have to spend so much of the time that we pay them for to even consider a matter like this? They’ve done some really great work before going away for break but this was never one of them.
3. The result of all of this is that some people are now going to do this thing in open defiance of our parliament. This is the same country where a political bag carrier was widely known even in official circles as People’s HONOURABLE. So what’s wrong with our ministers taking that title even if we don’t accord hem that on our pages?
We hope our MPs will enjoy their NINE-WEEK-LONG holiday. No visit to London please. You are in the RED ZONE.
22 SIERRA LEOEANS PERISHING IN GUINEAN PRISON
TWENTY TWO young Sierra Leoneans are banged up in a Guinean jail in Conakry. They’ve been there since December after their arrest in different parts of that country and accused of working with the battered and bruised opposition to destabilize that country. WE ABSOLUTELY STAND WITH THOSE SIERRA LEONEANS! An audio done by one of them, smuggled out of that prison and put on social media, is very clear about the circumstances under which they were arrested, put through a Kangaroo trial and jailed.
Our people were arrested in the heat of an electoral process that was marred by violence and killings sparked off by the controversial THIRD TERM bid by Professor Alpha Conde. He openly, but falsely, accused our own KOTOR JULDEH of colluding with his opponent to get him out of power. And as far as THE PROFESSOR was concerned those young Sierra Leoneans were mercenaries carrying out that mission. So TWENTY-TWO young men picked up with only their cheap mobile phones, passports and a few Leones, were mercenaries going to a foreign land to fight that government. Nobody will be that stupid to be sent on such a suicide mission. We call on our government to get them out of prison immediately. We know our embassy in Conakry has been doing some good job lately in intervening to free some of pour compatriots and even repatriating lost children found there, but we are concerned that these ones seem forgotten.
It is not a good idea for the OLD Chief Minister to run to Russia and America proclaiming a repositioning of our foreign policy (by the way we are still waiting for the government document on that) while our brothers are illegally jailed in our backyard by a supposedly friendly nation. Old Chief Minister should be on the road to Guinea immediately to work with the authorities there to free our brothers. In fact why was this issue not put on the table when Principal went there for that summit with Professor Conde?
We call on our government to strengthen our embassies in CONAKRY, BANJUL and MONROVIA with more personnel and money. We need Human Rights officers and Lawyers in those places because of the huge number of Sierra Leoneans in those countries. Things are not good for many because they face a lot of harassment and intimidation while we treat their citizens as brothers and sisters.
FACE MASK CHECKPOINT DROPS GUARD
It’s beginning to look like the so-called THIRD WAVE of coronavirus is being brought under control gradually and we probably should credit that to the measures put in place to fight this dangerous disease. Britain has put us in the RED ZONE partly because they are looking at our extremely poor performance with our vaccination efforts and that somehow we are grossly under-reporting our cases with some apparent laxity in testing. Be that as it may, we acknowledge the good work NaCOVERC has been doing under the circumstance.
The measures announced by Principal are due for review in the coming days and we’ll see how far we’ve come after the perils of JUNE 2021. What we cannot afford to do now even as numbers drop dramatically, is to let our guards down. We have noticed that there is very little or no checking going on at police checkpoints for masks in public transports. That’s very dangerous.
We want to particularly refer to the police checkpoint at Regent which is now an important gateway to and from the western half of Freetown. The officers there have simply not been doing a robust job on that front in the last two weeks. We pass through this place daily to and from work, so we know that passengers and officers on the ground are not taking the mask mandate seriously anymore. NaCOVERC should send out another statement to push the security forces hard and get them to enforce the mask mandate in a serious way. We don’t want people going around infecting others even with such restrictions in place.
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