Emmerson Bockarie – Cat among the pigeons?

The APC and their supporters are confused. But then that is an understatement; they are panicking because through Emmerson Bockarie’s newly released album, the truth is now being effectively told and propagated. “Yesterday Better Pass Tiday” is selling like hot cake all over the place and this is the reason members of the ruling party are reacting so wildly. And yet what has Bockarie said that is not a fact or that is not being echoed everywhere except among APC diehards? I have no doubt that even they, in their quiet moments would be saying to themselves, “Indeed things are getting out of hand.” IBM Kamara the Managing editor of the Standard Times newspaper has in his own peculiar way been drawing the attention of the President to many of the existing problems. I say “in his own peculiar way” because the gentleman either out of sympathy for the President or otherwise has never driven his point home forcefully. This week he wrote “HUNGER IS ENEMY No.1 AS THE COST OF ESSENTIAL FOODSTUFFS CONTINUES TO INCREASE BY THE DAY.” But Mr. Kamara refuses to tell poor Mr. President the effect of the escalating cost of essential foodstuffs on the people which is that they are suffering. JB Roy writing in the African Champion newspaper admits rather grudgingly that things may be difficult for now. He hasn’t the courage to say that things are difficult for many of us and very difficult for most people. All we continue to hear is the Global crisis. His newspaper and others disagree with Emerson and go forth into a lecture of how musicians must use their talent, which is to flatter the government rather than telling it as it is. According to them Emmerson’s interest is commercial rather than factual. Be that as it may, in their view, the young man tells the truth in that “Yesterday Better Pass Tiday” and the song must already be at the Top of the Charts and why not.

Many of the President’s praise singers refer to how Ernest has delivered us from the age of darkness, (“Freetown used to be the darkest city in Africa”) until the arrival of Income Electric and now Bumbuna. But have  we ever poured cold water on the success so far of Bumbuna, on the contrary, haven’t we, this columnist in particular praised and congratulated him. But what I will always find disgusting is statements like “THE FIRST NATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT (of his Excellency that is,) IS TOLERANCE FOR THE OPPOSITION…” What absolute nonsense! Where was JB Roy between 1996 and 2007? Even allowing for his sycophancy, could he cite one instance when the SLPP in power obstructed or suppressed the activities of the opposition APC? Would he compare the events of those eleven years with what we have suffered and continued to suffer at the hands of the APC and he calls that tolerance? What about all the sackings and replacements based on regional preference? Or the unprovoked attacks on the SLPP and their property? Oh my God, how sickening! Another habit of the praise singers and flatterers is to continue to give the impression that while EBK has given us light and continues to exhort us about “Attitudinal Change” the SLPP did nothing in its eleven years to move this country forward. There was no war, no massive destruction of life and property, no mass displacement of people both internally and externally, there was no terrible disruption of the education of our children, there was effort to fight the war, no demobilization, disarmament and Resettlement, no effort to rebuild. Tejan-Kabbah and his cabal simple sat on their oars embezzling the country’s meager resources on themselves without even building the bridge to Lungi. Yet the people of this country were so naïve as to return them to power in 2002 with an overwhelming majority. With all the infrastructural development undertaken by the SLPP, for most of which the APC would like to take credit today, if Christiana Thorpe and her mentors had not played with the voting figures which they could not balance even to the last moment, many of these people would have been singing a different tune today.

Whether his detractors like it or not, Emmerson Bockarie is not simply opening the eyes of our people, he is echoing what the vast majority are saying openly. In deed, ‘YESTERDAY BETTER PASS TIDAY’ and I would plead with the editors of the New Vision, Democrat and Awareness Times newspapers to reproduce the Kailahun Court Barry cost of essential foodstuffs yesterday compared with today. Do give the poor chap and the rest of us a break.

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