PROFESSOR AT BSL KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE BEFORE SPEAKING
The Professor from Greeley has been all over the place in the last few days trying to put some more flesh and context on what he is reported to have told parliament when he met the MPs recently. He was called in to explain the proposed redenomination of the LEONE. There’s been a lot of conversation on the issue since the Greeley Man announced his intention to carry it out.
In the engagement with parliament, Greeley Man is reported to have told parliament that BSL paid a “bribe” of almost 68 MILLION US DOLLARS just to get people to stop creating currency scarcity by hoarding the leone. The period under reference witnessed some liquidity shortage in the banks and even dirty old notes were being rationed. Business people in particular complained loudly and the national picture looked really bad.
The mere mention of the word BRIBE has been taken in its literal meaning by some in the media and politics and some of our colleagues have even gone to the extent of calling for the governor to be SACKED and investigated by the ACC. In the politically charged atmosphere of Freetown, this is RED MEAT for opposition politicians eager to land punches on the NEW DIRECTION.
We absolutely do not believe that the BSL BRIBED anybody let alone $ 68 million, and that indeed the word has been stripped of the context in which the Professor apparently meant it and wanted it to be understood. We accept the belated explanation he has been forced to do on social media. But we have something to say to PREFESSOR KALLON.
We know the man as an internationally acclaimed economist. There’s no doubt about that and he is qualified for the job he is doing now. But he doesn’t know even the most rudimentary aspects of political communication. We will use just two examples to illustrate this:
DESCRIBING OUR JUDGES AS CORRUPT – Just because the courts took certain decisions that BSL didn’t like, he labeled them as corrupt. He had a little fight with the newspaper that broke the story but was dragged into a meeting with the judiciary where he profusely apologized to cool the storm that was slowly sweeping him away. The picture of our central bank governor pleading for mercy over something that was easily avoidable was very embarrassing sir.
TALKING ABOUT BRIBING PEOPLE TO TAKE THEIR MONIES TO THE BANKS Why did this man use the word bribe, when he had many other words that fit what he really wanted to say? And for such a man with the gift of the gab, how about ENTICED, LURED, CAJOLED, etc.? His students in America would easily understand or excuse him but his audience as Governor of BSL is not that same as those young people in Colorado.
We will not be giving any free lessons on political communication here but all we can say is that next time Greeley Man says anything for public consumption, he should make sure that his body language, the words he uses and the settings of his comments should all make it possible for his actual words and intentions to be understood at once. We will not be so forgiving next time if the Professor puts himself in such PR quagmire with his eyes wide open.
OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS ARE COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Sierra Leoneans are coming home again to enjoy the Christmas and New Year festivities. It’s a normal thing for our brothers and sisters to escape the harsh winter for a few weeks and enjoy things on the sunny beaches in and around Freetown. They also come here to meet relatives and in some cases choose their future partners. But because of the deceitful nature of some of these disaporans, this aspect is now so discredited that only a handful of weddings now take place. Many young women in particular have been duped by Western-accented guys who made promises as FAKE as their accent, promising to take them to the West and other goodies.
So, we’ve observed how our relatives who come from abroad interact with us at home in Sierra Leone. We note that what we are saying here is NOT true of all diasporans but we think we are on firm ground to say more than half of those who make the journey home are in this bracket. It’s not as if we really care about how they behave, we just want to let them know we get the full picture:
1. In general they have a very condescending attitude towards home-based Sierra Leoneans. They also have a sense of superiority and a holier-than-thou attitude that turns people off. In fact the worst culprits are those who’ve done less than two years in the West. They would even ask for directions to the Cotton Tree.
2. While here they flagrantly violate our rules and regulations, road traffic rules which they dare not violate in their host countries. They put themselves above the law and our police officers are easily intimidated by fake American or British accent.
3. They criticize everything about Sierra Leone, including the turbulence in the skies above Freetown and the way the sea waves rock the ferries that bring them across from Lungi. How is that our fault?
4. They refer to Sierra Leone as UNA COUNTRY (Your Country) or DA CONTRY DAE (That Country) as if they were born in Europe or America.
Let’s emphasize that not all JCs behave this way. Some are perfectly normal Sierra Leoneans who actually understand our country for its difficulties and are ready to do what is possible to help but those described above are unreasonable, even FAKE.
VANDALIZING EDSA FACILITIES – THIEVES OR POLITICAL SABOTEURS
We want Mansa Kanja to tell us something about Operation Restore Electricity because we are fed up with seeing electricity transformers located in different parts of the country 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.
We want Mansa Kanja and his people to 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 areas. 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 leads us to ask the question why communities have failed to protect vital public infrastructure 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.
Copyright © Politico Online 29/11/21
