President Koroma’s Sustainable Development: A Rejoinder
There is nothing more dangerous to the career of a budding journalist than unbridled sycophancy. People including this author have read the dispatches of Alhaji Jalloh with some form of admiration. He was fundamentally different from morally challenged people like Chernoh Ojuku Sesay and the self-styled rebrander and sycophant-in- chief Kabs-Kanu. However since Alhaji Jalloh visited the US and mingled with highly honored certificated sycophants among the APC press core in the US, he seems to have drifted and that has shown in his writings. His piece on sustainable development lacks depth; reeks of sycophancy and populated by terms and concepts he either does not understand or ignored their meanings in his rush to become a newly minted and illogical Jelliba.
Let us ignore the near blasphemy that God would call the APC government a blessing for Sierra Leone and focus on what resembles substance of what this young chap really wanted to convey. Alhaji Jalloh claims in his title that President Koroma is on the path of sustainable development. Sadly and disappointingly, Alhaji Jalloh’s piece that followed reveals a dangerous lack of understanding what sustainable development is and how what President Koroma is doing can be described as sustainable. In simple terms, sustainable development refers to economic and environment changes that meet the needs of the present while securing the future. In addition, sustainable development must be one that the country can maintain at very low social, political, economic and environmental costs. I was hoping that Alhaji Jalloh was going to dilate on these issues. Of course he did not because he is incapable of such analysis.
Alhaji Jalloh who is usually focused and objective employed the usual SLPP-did-nothing propaganda line and deployed it within is piece. Let us now revisit what SLPP did in the five years of peace because Mr Jalloh like other sycophantic journalists conveniently forget that the APC worked hand in gloves with AFRC to make the country ungovernable during the first term of Tejan-Kabbah. Between 2002 and 2007 when Sierra Leone had uninterrupted peace, SLPP built schools in almost all the 144 chiefdoms in the country. They rebuilt all the hospitals and new health centers in 144 chiefdoms and district headquarters in the country. They secured all the loans and other funds for road rehabilitation. These include funds for the Masiaka-91 road, 91-Bo road, the Kenema-Koindu road which the APC has squandered as such the road will not stop in Pendembu and the Bo-Kenema rehabilitation road funds. They built roads in areas that were not motorable. Areas like Ginger Hall the scene of the 1971 APC massacre of Mendes can now be used by vehicles. Brookfields area, including the one time rock infested Bass Street area is now used by vehicles. Kissy bye-pass road was also rehabilitated. All those developments were due to the diligence of the SLPP government. APC government as it is has not initiated any development plan other than those plans written, mapped out and sometimes started by the SLPP government. That is a fact that cannot be denied.
Alhaji Jalloh was at pains to list the achievement of the APC as far as education is concerned. Mr Jalloh had the audacity and temerity to say education was expensive during the SLPP era. There seems to be a deliberate attempt here to misinform the reading public. For instance for the first time in the history of Sierra Leone did every chiefdom in Sierra Leone have at least a junior secondary and a senior secondary school. The SLPP government built all the schools destroyed during the war that was brought upon us by the APC misrule. These schools were not only rebuilt, girls were accorded free education and children in examination classes did not have to pay exam fees. During that era, enrollment in schools doubled and results in examination classes were very encouraging. Anyone with a sliver of honesty in his bones will admit that education has deteriorated dangerously since President Koroma became president. For the past two years, the exam results from schools have been so terrible that only two percent of those who took the exams were eligible to go to college. The APC minister of education in his deep seated hatred for people of the Southeast presided over the willful delay of distributing exam materials for students in the Southeast with the sole aim of making them fail their exams in droves. If that is what Alhaji Jalloh is calling improvement then Sierra Leone in deep trouble.
Lastly, Alhaji Jalloh also shamelessly invokes the usual myth of success-Bumbuna. That again Mr Jalloh, was 95 percent complete, by the SLPP when President Koroma took over and he took more than two years to commission an incomplete Bumbuna just to make a point. Now the so called completed HEP was shut down three months after its commissioning and you have the guts to call that success or sustainable development? This must be the new joker on the block. For your information Mr Jalloh where on earth did you read that the proletariat provides jobs for the average Sierra Leonean? Do you even know what proletariat means? In his quest to wallow in the cesspool of sycophancy Mr Jalloh just uses words that sound nice without knowing what they mean. Some of these journalists need to start paying GST for using words. That will save the readers from the agony of malapropism from these APC journalists.
The only thing the President Koroma and his incompetent government has brought to Sierra Leone is extreme hardship and compounded poverty. Inflation is at an all time high. The GST has increased the burden on the poor while Koroma friends and family swim in ill gotten wealth. In addition all President Koroma has done in his two and half years of incompetent rule is promise heaven on earth while he only delivers to his friends and family. Another pathetic thing that President Koroma has done is mortgaged the country to the international community and Tony Blair. In case you are oblivious Mr. Jalloh, President Koroma is not in control. His incompetence has allowed DFID, World Bank and IMF to run the country like a banana republic. Next time should you desire to write a sycophantic piece of praise for President Koroma please do us all a favor-make sure you know what you are writing – we demand that because you are being paid with our taxes and you are the face of our country. Your piece was a disgrace.
Ernest B. MalamangorStay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!
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