Government should stop this Aljazeera madness
The legal team of one of the accused persons in the ongoing timber documentary saga investigation, Momoh Conteh has put out a release questioning the integrity and sacredness of the Aljazeera TV network. The legal team says though they are responding pretty late they are concerned that the television network went desperately out of the legal way to issue out a press release that would prejudice the ongoing investigation process the country’s anti graft agency (ACC) is carrying out at the moment. (Photo: Abu Bakarr S Tarawally, Acting Editor)
The team believes that there are three equal sides to a story, my side, your side and the axiomatic to which they have given their side already. It behooves the commission to rope the Aljazeera TV network to account the truth about the issue under review in order to trail the self-evident in all of these junk.
The release went further questioning the contrast of evidence the Aljazeera TV network forwarded to the ACC to the emergence of extra force material in the form of a press release that would do no justice to the issue rather than prejudicing its outcome. One wonders in this case the abuse of authority and blatant challenge a media institution is putting in combat with Sierra Leone. As a matter of fact, Sorious Samura has told the media in Freetown on a number of occasion that the sum of US$2,000 paid by his team to his business partners as portrayed in the documentary was not a bribe but was money put aside to register a company in Sierra Leone.
By every stretch of imagination, the sum of US$2,000 will not set up a business establishment in few days as the documentary makes its viewers to believe such is the situation in Sierra Leone, because the country has procedures in registering a business name, certification of business patent, paying of NRA income tax and business establishment plan to give insight to the tax revenue authorities and what component of your business will attract further taxes ending up in the NASSIT requirements and labour criteria for employees under the business.
From a Sierra Express Media point of view, the Aljazeera TV network is just throwing spanners in face of the Sierra Leone Government officials to sell them in the world that they are corrupt. Second it has to do with the country’s Vice President’s personal integrity and pedigree which the documentary is simmering in the mud, because this is a test case for the president to prove that he is standing tall in the fight against corruption. He should not be seen protecting his Vice from being tried on corruption allegations but the basis to such trial should have to be established beyond malice and setups.
This issue is dragging Sierra Leone’s integrity to the mud further hereby reducing the country image as being corrupt. It also goes to sell a dark image of Sierra Leone to those who will wish to come and invest and transact with Sierra Leoneans.
As a media institution, we think the Aljazeera madness needs to be nipped in the bud and it has to be the government’s Ministry of Information and communication which should set the records straight on this matter. We have an information problem in this country; this is what we keep telling our reading public. Here in Sierra Leone anything coming from the international media could panic Sierra Leoneans who always give credence to foreign media. You cannot live on planet mass and tell earth what is happening there. In this case, Sorious Samura came as a miscreant in a mission against his country of birth and painted a fiction of a story that never exists in Sierra Leone. In this vein, all perceptions are carried away with fixed mindsets that nothing good comes from Sierra Leone.
For the purpose of records and history, we need no obstruction in the course of justice. We demand that the government does something to stop the unethical blackmail which the Aljazeera TV network have vowed to stand by and the ACC should not be distracted by all of these antics.
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