IN SEARCH OF DE PA – NORTH, EAST OR SOUTH, WHERE IS HE?
Has anybody noticed that De Pa has been absent from this great city for a while now? In fact in the last one month he has spent more time in the
regions than in rainy old Freetown. Well it’s easy to notice this because we keep hearing of De Pa visiting all the little corners day and night looking for votes. When this race started, it was widely said in Freetown that, with Osuofia as head of the GREEN, De Pa was virtually home and dry. A party official even said that De Pa could afford to travel overseas and not campaign and still win convincingly. Now it looks like a very close finish. The US ambassador says the “POSSIBILITY” exists for a “RUN-OFF”. The ambassador and many other Sierra Leoneans may be dead wrong but De Pa is putting a lot of man hours into the campaign than ideally he should for an incumbent facing a battered bruised and broke opposition amidst poverty.
The last we heard from him was that he was in the district of Pujehun and was guest of the Minah family. Festus, we know was around. But we
doubt whether the transport minister is back from his honeymoon in the Caribbean to join the Minah family in giving De Pa a good welcome. Charles Rogers and his politically-skewed World Bank-sponsored so-called “FOOD FOR WORK programme had to be there.
We are sure that over the fire place in the Minah compound, De Pa was told of the exploits of a man who once named himself Ndevuyama (a Mende expression meaning to RESTORE LIFE). De Pa also crossed a bridge between main Pujehun town and the home of his hosts. That
bridge was famous for torture in Ndevuyama’s days. We have been handed a list of APC opponents who were very badly tortured there and
chased into exile. At Politico, we are very careful in the way we do things. We are waiting for the right time to handle that list in the best interest of history and our people.
One of the political stories De Pa was told, we suspect, was how and why TEACHER KEMOKAI was killed in Zimmi and by whom. Interesting eh? It seems a long time ago but the teacher’s relatives are still there. They cannot mobilise media at home and abroad or political influence to
call for an inquest into the death of their father, son, uncle and grandfather.
The frequent illegal detention of the elders of that district on the orders of a certain guy was also a major part of that talk over the fire place.
Do people now understand why this Access to Information bill is still not law?
The people of Pujehun were proud to host the president of the Motherland but at the same time, they remember all those things that happened to the district in the days of Ndevuyama. It is the latter and not the flying one-off visit by De Pa that will inform their voting
preferences this weekend.
IS PROFESSOR GBAMANJA NOW AN ALBATROSS ON DE PA'S NECK?
APC strategists are quietly, in very low tones indeed asking themselves whether the so-called GBAMANJA COMMISSION report on senior secondary school exams isn’t their greatest undoing in general and presidential elections due few days from now. Some have described the professor who is retired and tired but is still chairman of this, that and all the others as a real ALBATROSS around the neck of De Pa.
The professor spent more than a year studying why many of our children failed the school-leaving WASSCE exams of 2008 only to produce a report calling for one more year to be added to the educational cycle. We have looked at all the recommendations and found some of them completely out of touch with reality and others including those rejected by the government, a kind of copy-cat work that emerges from a process in which wide consultation was a taboo.
What the GREEN boys have done is to hang on just one strand of what the professor produced and we notice it’s making waves around the country. We can’t say how much they themselves have considered the issue in terms of it being a bad policy. What we know from listening to the campaigns and the reactions of the people, is that they have struck a chord with parents and some of the young people, some of whom will be voting for the first time this year.
AS WITH ENTWHISTLE, SO MUST IT BE WITH HALOWELL
The era of George Entwhistle as head of the most powerful broadcaster in the world has come to an abrupt end. Entwhistle was in the coveted job for less than two months. He fell on his sword because he felt he had to take responsibility for the professional sins of his junior officers. Many have described his action as honourable. Now let’s travel by air about seven hours to the west coast of Africa to the country of
Sierra Leone.
In Sierra Leone, Gbanabom Hallowell is head of the national broadcaster, the SLBC. He has presided over a corporation that has committed so many professional sins that we wonder why he is still hanging in there when Entwhistle has resigned because a current affairs program made a
false accusation against a senior politician.
Under Hallowell, the SLBC has been totally unfair to the opposition and the millions who support them and contribute towards the running of the corporation and even paying the salary of Halowell through taxation. He has violated the act setting up the institution with impunity; the
organisation is broke and heavily indebted to banks; the staff constantly ask people and institutions for money, we saw that live on TV with Or Bangu passing cash; obscene language is not outlawed. We can go on and on.
Will Gbanabom hand in his letter tomorrow please?
SUICIDE ON LIVE TV – Or BANGU’S POLITICAL CORPSE IS BURIED The journey was made deliberately long, deceptive and frankly boring but the whole nation knew that Or Bangu was heading for the APC since the day he quit the PMDC in acrimonious circumstances. The strategists who choreographed Or Bangu’s short and uneventful political life set up an elaborate ruse to hide the fact that De Pa was playing a
coordinating role in dismantling the PMDC as a first step toward the attack on the main opposition party, the SLPP.
Or Bangu’s UDM was well resourced, his money came from sources we know very well and had uncontrolled access to the media. He was constantly on the back of other opposition parties. He once threatened to SLAP the NDA spokesman. He was to later describe his own threat as a mere “joke.”
When Bangura went on TV on Thursday last week to surrender his party to De Pa, absolutely nobody was surprised. We knew all along. For him to imagine that the whole nation was taken in by his tricks was self delusion per excellence. He has now driven the final nail into his
own political coffin.
So what happens now to the UDM? What about the few candidates they have around? What about the running mate? Those who bolted from the party recently probably knew they were at a dead end. Hundreds have now voted with their feet accusing the “YORK UNIVERSITY GRADUATE” of disrespecting them.
When Sierra Leone’s political history is written, Or Bangu will feature as the young man who tried to gain the world and ended up losing his
political soul because of reasons we will outline subsequently.
If this guy turns up to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage please make sure he will not just pass her on to another bloke on their wedding day.
DID BODE GIBSON SPEAK HIS MIND ON 98.1 OR WAS IT A HUGE GAFFE?
When Bode Gibson went on radio the other day and said Sierra Leone needs “A NEW DIRECTION”, he probably was speaking his mind. Was it Osuofia’s New Direction or his own new direction at the Freetown City Council? Remember Bode was part of that group that ousted Winstanley B. Johnson from the FCC to usher the era of Herbert George Williams which as we now know ended with corruption and criminal convictions.
The City Council itself has fallen flat on its face. The result is rubbish on many, many streets, hundreds of houses without toilets (how can we avoid cholera – nearly 300 Sierra Leoneans died recently), uncontrolled street trading, marijuana joints springing up in our backyards, open
rebellion against taxpaying, illegal garages and scrap metal yards on our major streets and lots more.
We don’t make decision for the APC, but we are scandalised that they put Bode forward as their candidate for this important job. That action
represents the APC’s low estimation of the democratic maturity of the people of Freetown. The people will let them know how they feel
in a few days time. Bode has a chance of returning as Mayor but he will see how many people think he should be out of council for good.
That’s very important.
So whether it’s his new direction or Osuofia’s SLPP project, we shall see. We suspect he regrets that outing on Good Morning Salone.
We had the opportunity to hear his mind.
“MOVING ON TO THE AGENDA FOR PROSPERITY – FIVE YEARS OF CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION” SAYS DE PA.
We received our copy of a nice magazine produced “By the Ernest Bai Koroma Government” with the above title on the cover page. It’s one of
those documents highlighting the “achievements” of De Pa in his first term of office. Not a bad idea at all. We can assure you that we have read good portions of it.
Here’s what we noticed: On page 32 De Pa is pictured in front of a lectern, apparently he was having a break for some laughter during a speech. The metal plate on which De Pa’s name is inscribed was turned upside down. Oh God! Didn’t the communication unit see that? We are human beings and do make mistakes but this is serious. They went to the printers without picking that out and changing that picture.
Our recommendation: Please recall all the magazines and change that picture. A Document like this will last forever. We are still reading
WHAT LIFE HAS TAUGHT ME, by Siaka Stevens.
