Yes, do they really understand?

It is the common thing, even the expected thing to recognize or show appreciation for the efforts and achievements of others, especially those in authority so as to encourage them to do even more. Take our President Ernest Bai Koroma for example. I have always felt that he is the symbol and the reason for the very existence of today’s All Peoples’ Congress (APC) party. His charisma and his pronouncements, his accessibility and apparent gentleness and humility have all endeared him into the hearts of his people. For now and for the likes of me, all the other flamboyant claims of re branding Sierra Leone, of transforming the lives of the people for the better since assuming the mantle of office, of his attempts at cohesiveness have all been more rhetoric than achievement. When we have said so openly and honestly, we have been branded as spoilers, traitors and unpatriotic members of society who have nothing good to say about the country. In spite of the insults and other derogatory remarks we have refused to be cowered or coerced into silence. Besides as members of an opposition, a very vibrant one at that, we see ourselves as a government in waiting, ready to take over from Ernest and the APC come 2012. We have never simply made wild and unsubstantiated statements; we have often backed those statements with facts and figures. We have in the past compared the prices of basic commodities under our administration with what they are today. In cohesiveness and running the country as ONE PEOPLE we have always given a list of ministers which demonstrated the regional and ethnic balance in the distribution of portfolios. We continue to point out that the flattery and flamboyant language used by such writers like Mohamed One drop, Sheik Sesey and others do his Excellency NO credit at all; on the contrary they open him to ridicule and to negative reactions from others who think differently. How could anyone speak of the President’s generosity being the result of his DNA, not to mention such aimless expressions like “Koromaism?” From where on earth did they get such porous ideas I wonder?

As of yesterday, palm oil was selling at Le 2,000 per pint, green vegetables at Le 1,000 for a small tie and rice our staple food going at Le 1,000 per cup. While the poor are reeling from the effects of this, someone from Atlanta has the timerity to state that “Tiday betteh pass yesterday.” Do such irresponsible statements not demonstrate a total lack of sensitivity to the suffering masses of this country? Why must someone whose only interest appears to be to assume the Presidency of the Atlanta branch of the APC write so irresponsibly? One could understand Professor Kelfala Kallon’s impatience with such characters who think that his (Kallon’s) article was an attack on the SLPP. How apt his question, “Do they really understand what they read or even write?’ And yet they all live under the illusion that they are doing a great job for President Koroma and the APC.

Read Puawui’s Lamentations over the environmental disaster that has befallen Aberdeen Creek in the next edition.

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