MAKENI DIOCESE GET A SIERRA LEONEAN BISHOP AT LAST
The Makeni Diocese of the Catholic Church in Sierra Leone is now headed by a new Bishop – the kind of guy the big guys in the Makeni Diocese wanted all along. When bishop Aruna who actually worked in that place was appointed by the Vatican, the leaders of the Makeni Diocese were up in arms. They told the Vatican that they would only accept a Sierra Leonean from their part of the country, certainly not Bishop Aruna from the political construct called South-east Sierra Leone. It didn’t matter to them whether he had worked in the Diocese.
A series of meetings and prayer sessions at home and abroad didn’t change anything. Ordinary church members were drawn into the struggle and some priests who quickly realized the shame and spoke against it were chased out of the area. In the end, a white priest was sent to the Diocese as a Bishop in all but name. There was no objection from the priests who championed the NO SOUTH-EASTERNER crusade. So the good people of Sierra Leone concluded that their relatives in Makeni were capable with an European leading them as long as that would stop their own brother from another part of the country taking the leadership there. We know that the leadership of the Catholic community in Sierra Leone asked King Messi to intervene and clear the shame but he turned the other way.
The Vatican covered the shame by sending Aruna to take over the Kenema Diocese following the death of Bishop Patrick Koroma.
We welcome Bishop Koroma to the job in Makeni. We wish him well. He is a young guy and we’ll see how he gets on with leading God’s children from that corner of the world. We hope he will do the following:
1. In his first homily he should state clearly whether he was part of those priests who galvanized the church in that part of Sierra Leone against Bishop Aruna or did he give support from the back?
2. What’s his position on the whole affair? Please our Bishop elect, don’t tell us to forget about all of that and look forward. This was a very dark period in the history of Sierra Leone so we need to complete the final paragraphs.
3. Please tell the nation how he plans to run the Diocese so that all the priests there would be proud to serve Sierra Leone and the world, not just one region of this country. What if somebody from Makeni Diocese was appointed Bishop of Kenema Diocese?
RAMAPHOSA DECLARES STATE OF DISASTER TO FIGHT BLACKOUT
We complain a lot about blackouts in the country – and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as we keep it within context in a measured way. Anyway, let’s spare a thought for our people in South Africa where rolling blackouts have caused havoc with the economy and the daily lives of the people.
Consider the size of the economy of that country and how businesses may have suffered leading to loss of jobs. A program of load shedding has intensified to the extent that the president has declared a State of Disaster to deal with the situation. He wants to direct more money and attention to solving the electricity wahala. ESCOM power provider is in serious mess – public inquiries and resignations taking place.
In Kabbah days ESCOM people came over here to help. They did their best but their best was not able to deal with an aging supply system plagued by sabotage. We are not doing badly today but we are absolutely far away from our own target as far as power supply is concerned.
We wish our people well.
SLPP KILLS FAKE CANDIDATE LISTS TO CONDUCT ELECTIONS
At the just concluded SLPP conference Principal killed this idea that district executives of the party would be allowed to go into their small rooms and prepare the list of candidates for seats in parliament. Principal said there would be ELECTIONS in all districts to be able to ascertain who the party members want to send to parliament. From this day on, those fake lists prepared under the influence of mainly CASH should be torn to shreds or thrown into a fire.
We actually found it strange that the GREEN Movement was going to resort to SELECTING candidates instead of putting them up to the people for scrutiny and election. In 2018, candidates were elected – well in some areas the process was so flawed that the whole thing became a farce and left people in the affected communities complaining about being slaughtered in their own abattoir. Those flawed decisions were taken by ONE guy at Wallace Johnson Street. He overturned the sovereign will of the party members in those constituencies and the party paid for that at the polls. It’s up to them to allow him to do a repeat in June.
We are using the PR System in June. There are no constituencies as we knew them so we need to know from the GREEN Movement what form this election of candidates would take. We will definitely deploy observers in certain parts of the country to be sure the rules were followed.
All those guys who paid a few cents to be on lists should now be ashamed of themselves. We pray that they fail in their districts.
PLEASE DON’T BRING KISSY ROAD TO HILLSIDE BYE-PASS
We know our SMILING MAYOR has totally given up on sanitation in Freetown. She has also given up on this whole question of controlling street trading. She thinks trying to organize the traders and restrict their settlements in Freetown is a vote loser. Instead of paying attention to these crucial issues, she is busy writing letters to ECSL asking for street by street registration figures. How she came to contest as Mayor in Freetown when a few days before nomination she was living in Waterloo rural area is something she doesn’t want to talk about. In fact she believes nobody remembers what actually happened.
All we are saying now is that as good people of Freetown, we don’t want to see what is happening now along Kissy road, transferred to Hillside Bye-pass road - we are talking about all that throwing of rubbish all over the place, selling second hand goods on the sidewalks and traffic chaos. Left with SMILING MAYOR she couldn’t care less about all this. She is always waiting to see the government take decisive action like the one at Abacha Street, so that she can run to social media to tell the world that “I was not consulted”.
The other day we saw pictures of buckets of rubbish packed on the roadside in that place. What is really happening in this city that SMILING says she has TRANSFORMED?
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