Fallout from recent cabinet reshuffle
Since the publication of the new cabinet list, what I have preferred to call a merry-go-round exercise, there have been many different reactions from different sources. One group applauds everything done by this government and which does not appreciate the critical comments that the likes of us make. To them names like John Benjamin, JJ Siaffa, Sama Banya and others have become mincemeat for their vile and hypocritical comments. (Photo: Dr Sama Banya)
Others have criticized President Koroma for daring to nominate JB Dauda for a ministerial post in an APC government. It is anathema to them and if they had their way they would reverse or annul the entire exercise.
Well, they can still do so through their members of Parliament; after all they have a majority of members on the Selection Committee as well as on the floor of Parliament. One such critic who amuses me is Alieu Iscandari who lives in the state of California in the United States of America. Iscandari is a lawyer by profession and claims to have been born APC and will remain APC. In his opinion which appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Global Times newspaper, Iscandari practically lambasts President Ernest Bai Koroma not only for JBD’s appointment whom he derides in equally strong language and alleges that the man will be the conduit through which future cabinet and other government secretes would be revealed. Iscandari cannot understand his Excellency’s failure to appoint more members of the APC living in the Diasporas to ministerial positions. He expresses equal disappointment at the Presidents appointment of some members of the diplomatic corps and criticizes the President for the latter’s failure to curb indiscipline and violence (referring to the recent violence against the SLPP in Kono), as well as his failure to curb corruption. I hope that the editors of the African Champion and for-di-people newspapers and columnists like one drop Sankoh have read the said article.
While Shekie Bangura the husband of the erstwhile Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and I are friends and often exchange pleasantries, I cannot say the same thing for his wife. I believe the feeling is mutual. Be that as it may, I refuse to believe that Haja Zainab Bangura has ever said that she would sooner resign from President Koroma\s cabinet than accept a posting to another ministry. Others have said that she qualified her statement with a rider, which is that if she were replaced by another colleague already in government. I repeat that I don’t believe she made any such statement because here was a lady who was full of praise in a BBC network programme for the President’s judgment even before she was appointed Foreign Minister in 2007. In the unlikelihood that she did, there would still be no need for her to resign because of the escape clause. But that is politics Salone style. The people of Kissi Teng chiefdom in Kailahun district have now voted for a new Paramount chief. Again if rumours are anything to go by then the people of the chiefdom must now await their reward of two ministerial positions from President Koroma in addition to reinstating the former minister of health and sanitation as a mark of his appreciation for their choice of his preferred candidate. It would be interesting to hear from the government’s spokesman, or is it another of those “from the grapevine stories?”
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