IG FRANCIS MUNU – GRENADES FOR ELECTIONS
Munu has to come truly clean about his real intentions when he put in that curious shopping list that landed very deadly weapons in the hands of the Sierra Leone Police of all people. The IG has since been on many radio stations justifying the purchase of those instruments of death.
There are lots of questions to ask about the quantum of money used for the Chinese-made weapons and why De Pa decided to buy weapons of that nature at this time when large parts of the country have no clean drinking water and the nation’s capital is covered in garbage. We shall come to that in subsequent editions. For now, let’s concentrate on IG Munu’s arguments in defence of this grisly purchase.
IG Munu says his men need the weapons to fight those who will to disrupt the coming elections in November. We are absolutely sure that nobody in Sierra Leone has raised a fighting force just to win an election and no scare tactic will convince us otherwise. As ordinary citizens of this great democracy, can we ask a few questions sir?
Do the police really need grenades and AK 47 assault rifles to disperse peaceful protesters or even a riotous crowd?
What is MAC-P about then? We thought MAC-P was about bringing in the military in particular when things get out of hand. If we are right, (and we know we are) why is Munu arming the police in a way only the military should?
The TRC had something to say about that so-called OSD police training camp in Samu, Kambia District, why did the government not implement that recommendation?
Isn’t it true that the Samu camp is more than a training outfit? We suspect it’s about teaching ideology and indoctrinating a politically-recruited group of young men and women.
Finally sir, why didn’t you include helicopter gunships – at least two and Katyusha rockets (that Palestinians are firing at God’s own people in the holy land), in your shopping list? Next time remember to include scud missiles. Saddam Hussein used them to great affect against Kuwait. So much for Community Policing.
You know sir, if you were a Metropolitan Police Commissioner in London during the riots, we wonder how many dead bodies would have littered the streets in the first 24 hours of Tottenham catching fire and the rest of the country getting sucked in. We find it strange to believe that even after our war experience, Munu still believes that only force of arms brings results. Can he please resign now?
WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEONES GONE? Ask IB KARGBO
Once again, IB is trying to treat us like idiots who have no idea that the country’s main banks have no money at all. We have indeed returned to the last day of Siaka Steven and the whole period JS Momoh was sitting at State House. Now you turn up at the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank with your perfectly legitimate cheque and you don’t have access to your money – Go Cam, Go Cam, Go Cam. We don’t know for how long the rest of the country will live with this before they pull out of the Sierra Leone Commercial Bank. We are talking about those who can do so. Not those workers whose TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND LEONES A MONTH salary is paid into that troubled bank.
In fact the nation needs better explanation of why For Sierra Leone Commercial Bank, people just can’t get money out of their own accounts. Even before this crisis, their cry was, ‘WE SYSTEM DAE DONG.’ Can somebody please return the IT system you bought in India and put in something much more robust? We shall come back after a month to see if the system is in good condition.
APC SIGN TOM NYUMA ON SHORT TERM LOAN
Warrior Tom Nyuma, the guy who tried to ‘assassinate’ Ernest Bai Koroma at Countryside guest house few days to the 2007 elections is in the news again. He’s been quiet since Leather boot and others gave him the beating of his life. Now he’s revealed the world’s worst kept secret – ‘I am now APC.’ We knew that long ago Old Soja! In fact we are expecting the RED boys to sign more players before August. They need strength in the reserves to sustain the fight or even land a first round knock-out punch which is what they really prefer.
We understand Nyuma completed his medical late on Sunday and has signed a three year deal to keep him at Marine House till 2015 for an undisclosed fee.
Sorry Kothor IB, is Tom Nyuma now your STAR WITNESS at the Bambay Kamara Inquest? Salone Politics needs some damn good scrubbing indeed.
LORD JESUS CHRIST ON SLBC
‘...For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not even what he has will be taken away...’ (Matthew Chapter 25, Verse 29) The Bible – Revised Standard Version.
We think Lord Jesus Christ was talking about institutions like the SLBC where the greatest injustice has recently been done. The victims – junior workers are suffering in silence. Consider this:
Nearly 100 of them have been sacked using a flawed process, implemented by people who have no legitimacy to sit on that Board of Trustees.
The few who remain have had their salaries cut by between 15 and 20% while the salaries of Gbanabome and that Deputy Director who is completely out of his depth in the place, remain the same and in fact looks set to rise soon.
The biggest test for the SLBC is coming in the next three months – will they be able to hold a professional balance among the political parties when campaigning begins. At the moment, we have no reason to believe they would – The National news is only about THE PRESIDENT, THE MINISTER, THE PERMANENT SECRETARY and THIS AND THAT NGO. Where are the ordinary people?
SLBC stations across have only three members of staff – Station Manager, Deputy Station Manager and Technician. Do people now understand why these stations have been reduced to a kind of mock broadcasting? The program producers have all been sacked. They were each told that suitable replacements have been found to take their jobs. Where are the replacements now? What sense does it really make to sack all highly experienced staff and attempt to replace them with your untested chums?
Their biggest supporter in the UN system, Michael Schulenburg has just been thrown out of the country and we hear the new people in the system have no confidence in that your unimaginative slogan – ‘your voice, my voice.’ What does it mean, taking your current approach to news and programming into consideration?
By the way, is your Board Chairman still running the show from America? This is a strange country. First Nahim Kadi runs the Football Association from his dingy flat in London, now old Professor Septimus Maximus is doing the same to the SLBC from OBAMA LAND. Up with absentee management of state institutions!
UNIVERSITY GRADUATION AT LAST
Finally, student s of the University of Sierra Leone will shake the hands of De Pa at the amphitheatre on convocation day at the weekend. We congratulate all of them particularly two of our directors at Free Media Group – Mr. Sayoh Kamara and Mr. Tanu Jalloh both of whom got FIRST CLASS degrees.
We only hope the issues that moved the event from its original date to three months later are never repeated. Young people have suffered. Those who were looking for jobs have lost out. Those who were due to travel for further studies abroad now have to wait another year.
De Pa and his ghost-hunting Education Minister should be told in no uncertain terms that we cannot run a 21st century institution, using STONE AGE methods, coupled with the irascible actions of a mercurial and unnecessarily temperamental Minister.
LONDON CALLING – ‘IT GOES TO THE CITY OF LONDON...’
Sierra Leone will definitely send a few athletes to the Olympic Games in London in the next few months more for the thrill of Good London or possible asylum declarations than truly competing to win anything. By the look of things they will be seriously embarrassed if they tried to shake hands with any of the 550 British athletes taking part in the games. The British have been told to keep their hands in their pockets when strangers stretch hands to greet to avoid catching dangerous infection. We make bold to say to even think of such a thing is unbelievable. To make it public is completely out of this world.
Sierra Leone Chamber of Commerce should help our local business people set up Abacha Street – like stalls near the Olympic village in east London to sell hand sanitizers. With 550 British athletes shaking hands after every race and therefore continuously buying sanitizers, our business people will make a quick kill - tens of thousands of pounds in three weeks. Good business! By the way, let’s also recommend that the Olympic village where non-British athletes will be camped should also be regularly sanitized.
Somebody is telling us as we write that he is disgusted with this kind of thought. We have dismissed his idea that the British cannot invite the world to their shores only to refuse to give them a warm handshake. It’s not strange. Didn’t the Germans tell their players in the last World Cup in South Africa to always wear bullet-proof vests when going to a restaurant or for general shopping?
