Stop the moaning and get on with it

In my many years of being a political observer and equally as many years or more as an active participant, I have never witnessed a party in government to be so immersed in of self-pity, and so sensitive to criticism, while at the same time it continues to be insensitive to vital concerns of its citizens and yet makes bogus claims of its achievements as the current All Peoples Congress government under the leadership of his Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma. (Photo: Dr Sama Banya)

The irony is that while it bemoans what its advocates refer to as unfair criticisms, opposition lies and fabrications, mischief making etc, the government has never given credit to any achievement of the erstwhile SLPP government. On the contrary it has accused us of having done nothing towards the development of our country in our eleven years in office other than to embezzle donor funds.

That is, with the exception of a single occasion when the President himself announced that he had inherited a strong economic foundation from the previous government on which it was going to build. Even that acknowledgment was short-lived as he has continued to lambast us with accusations of his having found NOTHING IN THE KITTY.

But let’s take a moment and carry out an inventory of what they have done which is original since coming to power almost four years ago. Of all the on-going construction work, I can name only the main Congo town to Lumley motor road, and then the road rehabilitation under way in the provincial headquarter towns of Bo, Kenema and Makeni. The much talked about claim on the Kenema to Koindu road which is inherited from the SLPP has not got up to Tissor which is only three miles from Kenema. That is some 24 months since the project was launched with great fanfare on two separate occasions by the President himself. The project was the main achievement about which the party has been trying to woe the people of Kailahun district that the APC had clearly defined development programmes for their welfare.

In four years what improvement has there been in the education sector? How far have we gone in achieving food security even though half way through our own programme we had exceeded more than 60 percent of our target in the production of our staple food rice?

If all the publicity of the agriculture and food security ministry were a reality and not simply slogans, we would have been exporting rice by now.

In the energy sector the APC inherited a Bumbuna project that had been 95 percent completed, but for propaganda purposes it was rushed through or to put it more appropriately they hastily bulldozed their way through the remaining 5 per cent. What have we got for it other than unreliable and interrupted energy supply to Freetown and its environs? That constitutes our 24 hours clean and uninterrupted electricity supply.

Need I bother with the runaway inflation and the unaffordable prices of essential commodities including our staple food rice? Let the women who spread their lappas on the ground when the supremo passes by tell us how they and their husbands go through the day.

I challenge the APC to tell us what there is about which to create mischief. All through our eleven years in power, especially at the end of the war all elections under us were conducted in a peaceful fair and acceptable atmosphere, free of political interference, from chieftaincy to college and university levels. Even as of last week a student in Milton Margai College was beaten into coma because he was not the preferred candidate of the powers that be. Yet we are referred to as dishonest trouble makers. Whenever we point out these ugly anomalies we are branded as being criminally minded.

Are we really maligning the APC when we say that under them, there is now more rampant corruption than ever before? What have they achieved in the youth unemployment area? Nothing, precious nothing. They are their own worst enemies because they simply won’t allow the people to have a free choice.

We will never be coerced or silenced.

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