The week just gone …
It was an eventful week that saw the two day official visit to Sierra Leone by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon and his wife to our beautiful but politically as well as ethnically divided country. In addition to meeting with our chief executive President Ernest Bai Koroma, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon donated additional equipment to the newly transformed Sierra Leone Broadcasting Cooperation SLBC from the formerly government controlled or government influenced Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service SLBS. I don’t normally receive SLBS or SLBC TV in my Sumaila Town Residence;  various people have made repeated unfulfilled promises to rectify the situation. And so I could not tell between President Koroma and the Secretary-General who commissioned the new broadcasting authority. That not withstanding we must all hope and pray that the station would remain truly the peoples’ own independent mouthpiece so that every news item does not begin with “the President this or his Excellency did that.”
Discussion or debate on the APC government’s decision to set up a commission of inquiry or inquest, into the deaths in 1992 of former Inspector-General of police James Bambay-Kamara and others raged on. Most of us skeptics have yet to be convinced that it is not an APC machination targeting particular individuals in the leadership of the opposition SLPP in order to thwart their ambition to challenge President Koroma in 2012. The government could dismiss my intuition not with a wave of the hand, but by setting up another commission to investigate other extra judicial killings of yester years.
The debate was raging when the UN scribe arrived in the country. The protagonists and antagonists of the proposed witch hunt saw it as an opportunity to rope him into the arena. The question was “Did Mr. Ban Ki-Moon categorically say or not that he endorsed the decision of the government to set up the witch hunt, I beg your pardon, the inquest?†Those who take the position that he did must be really naïve to think that an international diplomat could get himself in a national controversy like ours. Everyone agrees that in answer to a direct question which I now know came from Lans Gberie , the Secretary-General response was carefully measured. “There could be no peace without justice. That is why we established the Special Court. The recommendations of the TRC must be adhered to. The (final) decision rests with the government.†Over to you then Mr. President; “the buck stops finally at your door step.â€
The APC members of Parliament, aided and abated by their dying allies of the PMDC confirmed the reappointment of Christiana Thorpe as chairman of the National Electoral Commission NEC. The SLPP to their credit but with honourable Tamba-Sawyer abstaining voted against the confirmation. The minority SLPP Leader cited parts of the constitution which warranted Mr. Speaker to at least adjourn the sittings to allow further consultations on the matter. He was over-ruled because the APC had taken a decision and his was to enforce it, so the confirmation went ahead. His Master’s Voice HMV had been heard, dared him do otherwise? Christiana Thorpe will carry out her duties without the confidence of 47 % of the population as represented in Parliament. Good luck to her from the Kailahun court barray.
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