People continue to suffer under the APC

Some few months ago, that is, towards the end of the year I quoted a paragraph from one of our leading editors in which he was extolling the virtues of his Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma as far back of March of that year. Among other things he stated that since assuming office the President had transformed the lives of the people of this country; this was said at a time when the economy was biting hardest with the ordinary man and woman bearing the brunt of it. In the past other writers like J B Roy have heaped unqualified praise on his Excellency on how he had moved things around. Everywhere the superlatives have been superfluous, especially coming from the pens of such people like Thame Kurugba, the editor-in-chief of Cocorioko on-line publication who incidentally had since received his own award like Betty Foray and others previously of the UN radios “Front Page “ discussion group and others. The praise singing not withstanding the suffering of the people has not abated. I don’t have to remind readers of the derogatory adjectives that the President’s supporters used to describe some of us, a practice that has continued till today and all because we refused to be taken in by the sugar coated flattery that they heap on the poor man. (Photo: Dr. Sama Banya)

I wonder whether his Excellency has been reading the writings of many of the same authors as well as others lately. The praise is there all right for the President’s herculean task of carrying his team with him in his attitudinal transformation effort. But there is now a twist to it; his attention is being drawn to some of the ills of yester years which finally resulted in the country being engulfed in a great conflagration that lasted for eleven years. His Excellency is being advised; nay warned that the same factors are again rearing their heads as they did under the APC of Siaka Stevens and Joseph Saidu Momoh. But this is supposed to be a new APC. The President is being reminded that the cost of living is now beyond the reach of the ordinary man and woman. I would urge the President to revisit these opinions and alarm bells which are not coming from the SLPP’s Unity newspaper or from others perceived to be pro SLPP papers. It is a reflection on this government that while other countries have contained the effects of the economic downturn, it has done nothing to relieve the situation but continues to put the blame on the global recession or on its detractors. But how long must this self-deception continue?

It amuses me that even after sharing a platform with me last week where we were both honoured, the editor of the Peep newspaper continues to refer to the Puawui column as being boring over the last two years with the SLPP in opposition. Why the sudden modification when his readers can testify that he has used the same description of the column for the last ten years? Ha, ha. Even as I join others in praying for his rapid recovery, I can’t help wondering whether his current illness could be responsible for the lapse.

Supporters of the APC who include the managing editor of the for-di-people newspaper continue to allege that the NPRC military coup was masterminded by members of the SLPP because many members of the party served under the military regime. Well, the editor and owner of the paper himself also served as a Secretary of State under the same NPRC; what inference should we draw from that? Besides, the editor and his staff cannot pretend to have been unaware of the enormous popularity of that coup. Would they compare it with the ill-motivated AFRC blunder of May 25, 1997? Would the editor want me to name some prominent members of the APC who visited the temporary Cockrill headquarters of Johnny Paul Koroma Â (I was detained there for five days before being transferred to Pademba Road..) and just how many of today’s prominent APC members who were connected with that regime? I wonder if Paul Kamara still walks with a gait from the experience of “a night he’ll never forget” under the NPRC. My advice to poor Paul; if you are surrounded by glass don’t throw stones at others with statements like the Kailahun or Segbwema cartel being behind the overthrow of the APC in 1992. And what does the IMC which barks but only bites under the catalytic action of the government propose to do with the newspaper’s use of that obscene four letter word against Sylvia Blyden? Why did the great moralist fail to mention other women who went to the Law courts except the SLPP’s Harriett Turay?

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