KAN KAN KAN FIGHTS TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL
We know the people of this country are now familiar with the way Kan Kan Kan goes about his job as spokesman for the government. His position is to publicly deny any negative statement about the government while blowing out of proportion things as little as salaries being paid on time.
He is very angry with the Transparency International report that named Sierra Leone as the country with the greasiest palm in the whole of human civilization. Instead of seriously engaging the issues raised in the report, Kan Kan Kan is busy attacking Transparency International, playing up to his narrow political base in sections of this country.
He has even issued a press release questioning the accuracy of the survey, the sample size, and all that. He said those who conducted the survey did it at Country Lodge and on the beach, essentially saying, they concocted the figures while having a good time on booze and food and something else.
We know that Transparency International represented in this country by an NGO allied to Zainab Bangura has a good reputation. It is internationally acclaimed and respected by the same institutions and governments that Kan Kan Kan quotes each time the legitimacy of his government comes under attack. So they are wrong when things are bad and right when things are good. Ok we got ya!
Just for the sake of it, let's assume this was 2007 and the nation was about a month to the elections and then Transparency International had just issued this report with the SLPP in power. How would Kan Kan Kan have reacted? No thanks for guessing right because his reaction is predictable. Now his government is in power, he is all over the media trying to impugn TI's credibility. Or even if the same sample survey had been used to hail his Thane of Cawdor and his Thane of Glamis (never mind De Pa) would he not have jumped with it all over the world!What is wrong with this man? His behaviour sometimes smacks of someone with a lot to hide.
The truth is, the TI report is now on the desk of all major governments and institutions in the civilised world and that's the image of our country wherever we go to beg for money and other favours. That's serious!
TI named the Police, Judiciary and Politicians as the most corrupt institutions in Sierra Leone. Which serious Sierra Leonean will deny that? Kan Kan Kan should never take us for granted. We are intelligent enough to discover the angle he is coming from.
AGENDA FOR PROSPERITY DOCUMENT LAUNCHED AT LAST
So after all the hype, the Agenda for Prosperity prescription which De Pa used to campaign for re-election last year has now been formally launched. By the way where is this document’s senior brother – Agenda for Change? We have commissioned a team of experts to study both documents with clear Terms of Reference. We shall publish their report in due course.
Now, De Pa says we will need US$ 5 billion to successfully implement the Agenda for Prosperity. Wow! We want De Pa to tell us where that money will come from. May be the much-talked-about Chinese “investors” will provide their investment purse towards that. While that is being mulled over, in our view a lot of money can be saved if De Pa did the following:
1. Drastically reduce the number of ministries. We need no more than 12 ministers and there are many ministries that absolutely do not need deputies. Look at the ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Lands, the Ministry of Tourism and a lot more. There are professionals in those places who can handle the tasks in the absence of the ministers. What do their deputies do anyway! Anyway…
2. End unnecessary overseas travels by you, your appointees and those party faithful who swell the numbers of overseas delegations. Drastically cut down those big government delegations that travel to every small meeting around the world. We will save a lot of money from per diems, air tickets and hotel bills like the one we once paid at the Waldof Astoria in the US.
3. Internally, too many sensitisation and other workshops for every government project should be discouraged. And people who lose government money in bogus accidents must be thrown into jail and not rewarded as ministers or deputy ministers as if the rest of the people are fools.
4. Carefully study procurement contracts given to ruling party supporters and their wives by making sure they are well budgeted for and delivered within time. Lest we forget, catering contracts overwhelmingly won by a certain privileged restaurant should also be looked at.
5. Establish a justification mechanism for mobile telephone bills incurred by your appointees and scrap their roaming facilities.
We shall continue helping De Pa with more cost-cutting initiatives in subsequent editions.
SLFA ELECTION: PRESS RELEASES BY FACEBOOK FROM BELGIUM
Facebook has really revolutionised communications in Sierra Leone and it looks as if the Sierra Leone Football Association is leading the way with their unique handling of press releases particularly those dealing with the up-coming SLFA leadership election. We can’t understand what is so special about a press release announcing the opening of nominations that the SLFA feels obliged to pass the document first to a Sierra Leonean diplomat in Belgium before calling the local media’s attention.
Those press releases are issued in a unique way. They are normally accompanied by prejudiced inuendoes against one of the candidates thus confirming widespread accusations that the government is not neutral even in an election in which only 47 delegates make up the electorate. By this time all of those delegates are pledged but somehow the Sierra Leonean diplomat in Belgium takes lots of time off his diplomatic schedule to comment so freely about the SLFA election.
Many local sport journalists can’t understand what’s going on. Well, all we can tell our colleagues is that the SLFA Normalisation Committee has completely lost its way and no matter the public postures of its members, things are not going well.
The sooner they handed over to an elected body, the better. Both front runners for the presidency have assembled restless and fractious coalitions of support such that it is going to be difficult for them to take independent decisions once elected.
We are commenting on this just because we feel there ought never to have been an undemocratic Normalisation Committee. The electoral process was well underway. After seven months in office, we are in the same place we started from. Nobody should put their necks on the chopping block to say that the incoming executive will succeed. The whole place is dangerously polarised.
PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION IS DEAD, ASK BERNADETTE LAHAI
Why do we have a so-called opposition party sitting in our parliament? We ask because we just can't feel their presence in the place. They are the ones now leading De Pa's ONE PARTY democracy at Tower Hill. We could point to no legislation or nomination sent to parliament by De Pa that has been well and truly debated or scrutinised. All the so-called opposition has done is to rubber-stamp the documents and forget about the interests of those who sent them there and all those who definitely believe we shouldn't allow the Red People to create a ONE PARTY state. Left with parliament alone, ours is now a one party state.
Some presidential nominees that have been approved by this parliament with the active support of the so-called opposition will fail any serious scrutiny anywhere.
Let's now put it straight: the so-called opposition is badly led by Bernadette Lahai. Despite all the fanfare that accompanied her appointment to that post, she has simply failed to deliver. We have seen many opposition leaders in this country and others. So we know what we are talking about. Bernadette is sitting there snugly while loan agreement after loan agreement, legislation after legislation, nominee after nominee and even a supplementary budget are sailing through unchallenged.
Ask those who matter in opposition heartlands including in her own constituency in Kenema district, they will tell you how disappointed they are. We warn Bernadette Lahai that she risks following her former colleague from Bo district out of that place.
While the wider opposition is in disarray, many expected the parliamentary party to stand up and fight for the people. Many people now firmly believe that Bernadette is totally unable to lead and must resign from her post as leader of the SLPP in parliament. The consequences of her continued stay are for the SLPP to imagine. We are journalists waiting to pick up the pieces in nice features about a party that was.Sorry we just got reminded that the Majority Leader once said in Parliament that the Agric doctor was once considered by De Pa for a ministerial position. With the 444 biting, she is probably hoping De Pa will TESTILO again.
