Educating Santigie Kamara
Santigie Kamara is a columnist in the Standard Times newspaper. Most times I find it difficult to understand the message he tries to put across which on most occasions is the same chorus of praise singing. Commenting on the news of the recent converts to the ruling APC from both the opposition SLPP and the government’s own allies the PMDC, he describes it as an alarming exodus. In the piece, he picks on the “80 year old Dr. Sama Banya†as the object of his vilification. Why the emphasis on the figure 80 as if one had been trying to conceal it, when on the contrary I entered it with joy and thanksgiving.
The source of Santigie’s wrath is that I had played down the significance of the cross carpeting which he describes as if it was a new phenomenon. Much more than that I was supposed to wear sack cloth, shave my hair and rub ashes all over my body as in Old Testament times.
Well, I am sorry that I have disappointed the young man and earned his insulting innuendo. Santigie says that the reverse of the current rate of defection to the APC was not observed or reported when the SLPP was in power. Does he have any recollection of any defections at all especially when newspapers like the one for which he writes devoted a great deal of their time playing down the achievements of the SLPP? Has he forgotten his managing editor’s distortion of facts over the Libyan rice and other donated items from that government? Now he hails those members of the SLPP executive who have gone over to the APC almost as heroes. He is apparently so blinded with bias that he wouldn’t even comment that those people were running away from a party that had lost power to one now in power. He is almost cooing over them; they may be heroes; to put it another way they are not “political prostitutes†or opportunists. And yet people like him keep referring to me in derogatory terms even though I LEFT A RULING PARTY FOR ONE IN OPPOSITION. Where is their objectivity or sense of fair play as journalists or perhaps more appropriately charlatans?
We have implicit faith that when it comes to decision time, the people of this country will discern reality from propaganda. Even his own bosses could be seeing to be disillusioned by current developments or the absence of such other than the “pull nar doe†syndrome of SLPP executed programmers. The APC may appear to make inroads into the southern and eastern provinces, but we in the SLPP shall only show concern when we see that translated into the results of violent and intimidation free and fair elections.  Â
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