PPRC CREEPS OUT OF ITS MANDATE BUT HOW WILL THE MEDIA REACT?
We read an interesting story in AWOKO newspaper this week about a meeting between the Political Parties Registration Commission and some radio journalists. The journalists left the meeting asking themselves what the whole thing was really about.
According to AWOKO, the Journalists were told that they should “inform the commission when they want to engage political parties in discussion” programmes on air. Did the PPRC really say this? Now let’s try and put statement into practice. Radio Kolenten in Kambia decides to host a discussion programme with officials of the two main political parties about keeping the peace after the elections. The first thing they should do, according to the PPRC, is to inform the commission so that they “will send a representative to the programme to correct immediately any untrue statement or refer to things that may not be in their mandate and use the opportunity to inform the media accordingly”.
Yeah! The PPRC needs to know that not even the statutory media regulatoty body, IMC, can attempt this kind of elaborate censorship and get away with it. This big brother role that the PPRC wants to play in the media has failed and Tolla Thompson must be told to stop now.
We will welcome a debate with the PPRC on whether they were right to have registered some parties that performed so badly in the elections when the commission knew they weren’t national parties. We know where their offices are located outside Freetown. One of such parties has its office in Kono in an old, abandoned petrol station, yet the PPRC registered them including the others that rented veranda rooms in Bo and Kenema that are permanently locked. The PPRC job is very lucrative, but Thompson must keep an eye on the political parties and allow journalists to do their job.
MONEY WAHALA – POPE JOHN PAUL TAKES ON MERCURY AGAIN
Another round of attacks against the sport betting company, Mercury International is just getting underway. We hear that Pope John Paul wrote to the company asking for a huge amount of money, more than Le 100 million for Sierra Leone’s trip to neighbouring Guinea for a CAN match. Apparently fed up with being blasted all the time by the Pope, the company decided not to put a penny into any such venture anymore. The Pope is now accusing them of sabotaging his administration and the development of football in Sierra Leone.
These are very serious allegations to make and we would ask the Pope to back up his accusations with hard evidence.
The Pope knows how important evidence is in matters like this. A copy of the letter he wrote to Mercury International was read out to us last night. It’s interesting. We will not comment on it until we get a copy from our source in the ministry.
Football played a key part in the last presidential campaign. WORLD BEST won the presidential race. Now let’s see what he will do for football. It shouldn’t start with the minister fighting with a sport betting company over funding of the national football team for a match next door in Guinea.
MORE CLUES ON CABINET MINISTERS - AGENDA FOR PROSPERITY
We continue with our clues as to what will happen to ministers now in De Pa’s cabinet in relation to the new cabinet he is setting up for his second five-year term. As we said in the last edition, we don’t have the final word on this but we have considered a lot of variables before coming to the conclusions we make here. And our methodology is spot on.
FISHERIES AND MARINE RESOURCES – DR. SOCCOH KABIA - Kabia will remain in government and possibly in the same ministry. We know that towards the elections, there were no fish in the market. Things got so bad that fish sellers at Krootown Road market threatened to demonstrate topless against the minister’s policies. The minister fought back. However, because he is very boring any time he’s on radio, we didn’t get all of what he had to say.
De Pa looks set to repay him for ditching the PMDC and its leader, The Dalai Lama. That wouldn’t be a bad move because De Pa now needs people who are very loyal to him and we can vouch for Dr. Kabia. We are not sure though that he will remain in the cabinet after 18 months.
INTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER – MUSA TARAWALLY
Minister Tarawally has a serious public relations problem throughout the country and he has made no effort to tell Sierra Leoneans who he really is. All many people know about him is what they read in the Shears-Moses Commission report and that he has jumped from SLPP to PMDC and to APC, depending on who has milk when. However, he is fiercely loyal to De Pa – perhaps like he was to Charles Margai and Solo Bee – who has stood by him despite the outcry in the media following the publication of thatShears-Moses report.
We reckon Tarawally will remain in the cabinet, possibly in the same ministry. De Pa may also decide to give him a role closer to the presidency – a kind of presidential affairs minister job. Tarawally’s movement will be an interesting one to watch, but his departure will delight many if not most.
POLITICAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS – ALPHA KANU
First of all we want to ask De Pa on behalf of the good people of Sierra Leone to scrap this ministry – it’s totally unnecessary and the fact that there is a deputy minister hanging in there compounds our total disgust for this waste of money. We will be pleasantly surprised if Kanu is thrown out of government.
Our instincts are that he will continue in another role but that magalomanic chief of a deputy minister will have to return home to be with his people (we don’t know what the section chief was doing pretending to be trying to run a government ministry).
De Pa’s mood during the final minutes of drawing up his cabinet is crucial to Kanu’s survival.
HEALTH AND SANITATION – TM BORBOR-SAWYER OR...
Here is a great opportunity now for De Pa to end the reign of mediocrity taking place with a cantankerous former police officer trying to be health minister in the 21st century. We have heard a few hints about where that ministry is going but that’s up to De Pa. Our role in this column is to deal with those who are there already.
Borbor Sawyer played the Kissi card a lot during the election. He presented the Kissi people as the marginalised lot in Kailahun and that he was the modern Moses to liberate them. It was a dangerous thing to do. We don’t know which role he played in the defeat of Musa Tamba Sam but even that may not be enough. De Pa may choose to keep him around for a few more months in the role of a deputy minister at the ministry of labour. The other guy in that ministry Mamoud Tarawalli looks set to remain in post.
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS – JOSEPH BANDABLA DAUDA
We don’t know what this water melon was doing in De Pa’s cabinet in the first place. Look at his trajectory – SLPP – APC- SLPP – APC, now he is old and has lost touch with Kenema, the probable reason for his miscalculated appointment. This man is gone from the political scene. We want De Pa to surprise the nation.
MINISTER OF YOUTH AND SPORTS – PAUL MOHAMED KAMARA
Well we have reached a name very close to us. He is a journalist who is now into big time politics. We believe he will continue in government but we beg De Pa to take him out of the ministry of youth and sport. He has been fighting everybody remotely associated with sport. He keeps acting ultra vires – banning people from a public facility like the national stadium and causing FIFA to unnecessarily intervene – directly – in out football administration.
Kamara could easily return to the ministry of lands where he served Julius Maada Bio’s NPRC in early 1996. And, there’s a lot of fighting to do in that ministry against illegal land grabbing. This time the microphone will not be enough, Kamara will have to have an army of machete-wielding blokes to inspect government lands around the country.
MINISTER OF LANDS – ALLIEU PAT SOWE
Like Minkailu Mansaray, Alieu Pat Sowe will survive the coming Tsunami only because he is from the inner core of the old APC and De Pa wouldn’t like to annoy them as a crucial succession battle begins in two years time. Swapping ministries with Paul Kamara is very much a possibility.
In the case of Pat Sowe, we cannot also vouch for him remaining in cabinet after 2 years. It will depend on his continued loyalty to De Pa when the succession struggle begins.
We shall conclude this segment on Tuesday but before that...
TOURISM MINISTER PHONES TWITTER
Minister of Tourism called twitter yesterday to raise issues about our satire on her in our last issue. Very interesting stuff...see Tuesday.
SECOND HAND SCRAPS FLOOD FREETOWN: WHERE IS STANDARDS BUREAU?
We are used to people buying second-hand clothes in Sierra Leone. Recently second hand underwears took over the streets. Visit the top half of Rawdon Street and see all shapes and sizes, male and female. Also available now are second hand shoes, beds, chairs, bicycles, computers, water bottles, mattresses and linens, hairdryers and, wait for this, CORNFLAKES. We can’t believe this is happening in our time - SECOND HAND CORNFLAKES? We asked from the outset whether the Standards Bureau or whosoever has this responsibility to keep sub-standard goods out of this country are doing their job. How can we allow such things to be dumped on us as if Sierra Leone is a dumpsite? All kinds of rotten TVs are sold in Sierra Leone. Kissy Road is the place to go. Our people in the Diaspora are busy collecting and sending unwanted chocolate, cornflakes and whatever they can lay hands on to this country for sale.
What we don’t like is when the authorities turn a blind eye or pretend as if they are powerless in the face of this inhuman trade. The expired goods are all over Freetown.
The result is when the people fall ill; the government picks up the bill with whatever little health care they can provide. Somebody somewhere must stop such dangerous goods entering this country. We are not the only poor people in the world.
© Politico 06/12/2012
