Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella is a ‘buff’ man
In very many respects, Dr Kandeh Kolleh Yumkellah and his KKY Movement have demonstrated that they are mere ripples that would not constitute a wave in the dense Atlantic Ocean.
Dr. Yumkelleh’s absence and his on-and-off visits to this country at such a time all indicate that he really does not mean business but only wants to create ripples in an ocean, the bottom of which he cannot fathom.
His blunder in the registration saga in his party, the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), done clandestinely and not through proper procedures, done only in 2013, when he knew he was about to retire, coupled with his radio interview in the Monologue programme, where he clearly stated that he was not interested in Sierra Leone politics, only to reverse that opinion a few months later, point to the absence of some of the trustworthy characteristics of a real statesman: decision making and procedural ethics.
No Sierra Leonean, in his right senses and a patriot, would equate the fitness to rule this country of Dr. Yumkella to say, Vice President Victor Bockarie Foh, who has been in the All Peoples Congress (APC) since the days of Pa Sheki to date.
Politics is all about identity. You must show the people where you belong, what your ideology is and where you come from.
Yumkella’s claim that his father was a founder member of the SLPP is no justification to make him flag bearer of a party he joined only in 2013, simply because he is a retired United Nations worker, who is far removed from the grassroots electorate of his party and by extension, the masses of Sierra Leoneans.
Even Julius Maada Bio and others like John Oponjo Benjamin, Andrew Keilie, Momodu Koroma, alpha Timbo, Ernest Ndomahina or even Charles Francis Margai, were he to return to the SLPP, have better credentials for the flag bearership of the party than Yumkellah.
This is because many party stalwarts see him as no different from the late President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a good President but a bad party man that left the SLPP in tears and pieces, to the point of disintegration.
Again, for the sake of regional balance, even Pa Ernest has no inclination for a northerner to succeed him, when one considers that the mantle of power in the country had been a northern monopoly since Siaka Stevens to Joseph Saidu Momoh to Tejan Kabbah and now to Ernest Koroma.
One of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and, for that matter, the international community, after the war, was to avoid all the practices that contributed to the war, one such being the monopoly of power by any one ethnic group, political party or region.
So let Yumkella stop the gesturing and get serious or else I see him reenacting the fate of John Karefa Smart, always running away to America only to come for elections, actually never putting down strong roots to make him win the Presidential elections.
Talking politics, With Jo-Nyangu
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