By Umaru Sitta Turay
It is understandable that citizens follow their leaders at every step of life. Yes, they are public figures and therefore they are supposed to be scrutinized so that excesses can be suppressed in the interest of good governance and “role-modeling”.
It is not a bad thing for every step of the First Lady, for example, to be monitored by the general public. In fact, that is considered as normal. Public figures are supposed to be role models for society. I will not challenge anyone who fairly criticizes any public figure with civility and decorum. Fatima Bio is a human being and therefore is not flawless. She will have some shortcomings that may not be liked by her critics. I accept that, albeit with some reservations.
I don't think revealing aspects of what may be referred to as the private life of public figures can be controlled because of the following reasons. The people who look up to them or those they lead have the right to know aspects of their private lives just so to make sure privileges that come with high offices of state are not abused. Apparently, private details of a public figure sell newspapers, make good social media news and sometimes television stations become popular for the questionable use of private material to certain extent for the reasons described above.
These days there are Sierra Leoneans who resort to vicious verbal attacks on their political leaders and public figures especially the First Lady and the President. Respect for privacy has faded away so much that some are on record for extreme insult. Words that cannot be written will be spewed out like bile. It does not matter how, who or where these agents reside, rudeness and disrespect to the leadership of Sierra Leone and by extension its citizen is becoming rampant. That is not acceptable.
What is disheartening now in Sierra Leone is that citizens praise bad things more than they do good ones. I am still pondering over why such change in the Sierra Leonean culture and tradition. Citizens fall in love with bad songs, rude social commentators, rogue politicians, they support people that have stolen their tax money, and they put their lives on the line for people who enrich themselves at the expense of the country. It astonishes me that Sierra Leoneans have not been able to change their lives after the war. People have not learnt their lessons and for that reason, they are still in the bad days of APC governance. That was when everything was forced on the people and the country remained backward.
The recent spate of attacks on the person of the First Lady has no justification and it’s at its lowest level in many years. When one wakes up every morning, one of the first things that are seen posted on especially social media is the nonsensical attack on the First Lady. It seems as if these attackers are sitting in their bedbug-ridden chairs just to write those headless rants. The successes of the First Lady are not mentioned. The “Hands off Our Girls” project has become one of the best undertakings of any First Lady in the history of Sierra Leone. That project has prompted the police and the judiciary to create a special system that handles only sexual violence cases. People have been convicted and more are being arraigned and tried in court for sexual assault on women and children. The critics do not talk about such success. The only thing they are specialized in doing is negativity. But, it is these same people who form queues when the First Lady is distributing food items and cash to help homes that are finding it difficult to cope with the COVID19 pandemic or during the Holy Month of Ramadan.
It is these same people who are at the doors of the First Lady every evening seeking favors on diverse things and issues. They disguise themselves as part of the New Direction administration and ask for political appointments and the like. Some are even in the governance system, benefiting from Fatima’s hard work, while briefing media outlets that are bashing her and the government every day.
There are state officials who have intimate relationships with haters of the New Direction and want to see the downfall of the system. They divulge the activities of the system every day and for that reason the opposition is playing around with that information. There are people who organize lavish parties for the leadership of the APC in the middle of elections and have now quietly found their way into the New Direction. That may be a nice but potentially dangerous gesture. Some people do not like the SLPP and even if the SLPP makes them president they will work against the party and its membership. These are the people masterminding the attacks on the First Lady and the president. Something must be done and the time is now.
These moles are those causing the problem. They must be removed if this government should breathe normally. There is a chokehold on the government right now, created by massive moles within the system, working for the benefit of the opposition. What President Bio has done is to bring everyone on board and in the process he has turned his eyes away from the threat posed by his political enemies.
I can understand that most of these guys that went to the NGC were SLPP but have they been properly vetted to see if their allegiance has returned to the SLPP? That is the question we should start asking and a proper background check be instituted. We are also seeing diehard APC supporters holding positions at State House; the corridor of the presidency. Working at State House, even as a janitor, allows somebody access to information on strategic issues about the government. These people are the ones passing all kinds of false information to the antagonists busy bashing our First Lady.
I recommend these guys be removed immediately and replaced with either non-partisan technocrats or qualified SLPP supporters. After all, our democracy is about “winner-takes-all”. There are SLPP members all over the country if it is for the fear of regional imbalance in the distribution of positions. There are die-hard qualified SLPP members from the north and north-west who can do a better job than the moles paying operators to attack the system and the leadership. I mention this because there is the fear that the system may portray regional bias when the weeding out of moles begins. Such fears will go away if they are replaced with the appropriate people that are part of the SLPP. It makes no sense to keep the obvious moles around while they continuously mastermind attacks against the government.
My call in this piece is that, what is happening now, as far as the attacks on our First Lady are concerned, is coming from moles, and these moles must be thrown out immediately. There is enough manpower and regional representation in the SLPP party who will make us look nationalistic if we meticulously do our appointments. It is also time to set up the intelligentsia. Intelligentsia and Counter Intelligentsia have benefitted the party since 1977 and that must be re-awakened.
This time it must be sophisticated to meet modern needs. That brings me to the leadership of the secret service within the Sierra Leone Police. It is messy out there right now. That service, all over the world is led by loyalists of the ruling party. At the moment it is not like that in Sierra Leone and it must be changed immediately too.
I rest my case for now.
The author is the Press and Information Attaché at the Sierra Leone Embassy in Conakry, Guinea
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