Opposition Members Urge SLPP To Take Responsibility For Its Failures
It’s amazing among meaningful Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad in the continuous manner in which the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) led Government of President Bio is blaming opposition figures/stakeholders over the Wednesday August 10th, 2020 planned peaceful protest, which became violent and caused the deaths of police officers on duty, as well as the anti-government protesters, who were shouting “We want peace, Maada must go”. Prior to the destructive protests, which left many in police cells and others with injuries, a press release was issued by the Chairman of the 21 Man Interim Transitional Governance Committee (ITGC), Alfred Peter Conteh, disassociating the All Peoples Congress (APC) from the planned protest, whose campaign messages for people to come out peacefully without any weapon or sharp object had been flowing on social media for over a month, under the auspices of the man that had already taken responsibility for the August 10th unfurtunate incident, Mohammed Kamara aka King Adebayor.
Furthermore, the organizer of the deadly protest, ‘Adebayor’, made it very clear that the protest had nothing to do with either stakeholders or grassroots of the APC, but virtually, it was organized under the PPP acronyms, which means People’s Power in Politics. In addition to the above, no APC stakeholder was spotted on the streets of Freetown, to be specific, throughout the demonstration period, but the Minister of Internal Affairs, Panda Noah, his Deputy Minister, Lahai Laurence Leema, Minister of Information, Mohammed Rahman Swaray, Minister of Trade, Hinga Sandy and many other top government officials were spotted on the streets engaging themselves in various activities on behalf of the Government to get the situation under control. It’s really amazing to hear, not only President Bio, who was telling BBC that the incident had political undertone, but majority of the ruling party supporters joining in the chorus, pushing the blame on the opposition for the August 10th demonstration, why?. Moreover, many protesters spoken to by Sierra Express Media and other journalists, including international journalists intimated that they are demonstrating against the continuous unaddressed issue of general hike in prices of basic food commodities, no justice for the poor, political intimidation and bullying against perceived opposition sympathizers, the economic stagnation, lack of job for the active and youthful population, lack of respect for women, killing of innocent citizens without instituting an investigation to bring perpetrators or defaulters to book, the prevailing regional and tribal sentiment in governance, among many other reasons, which are affecting the co-existence among Sierra Leoneans. It’s really disappointing for the failure of the Bio administration to accept the fact that it was the unaddressed problems of acute hunger, hardship, unemployment among the youths and abject poverty that caused or aggravated the unrest in Freetown and other parts of the country.
In that regards, it’s now very clear for the SLPP Government to understand that the demonstration or strike action was not caused or sponsored by any opposition heavy weight, but was the citizens themselves that organized the protest to tell the Government of its myriad of problems, which needed urgent attention. It’s high time the SLPP Paopa led administration of HE Bio stops pushing the blame on members of the opposition for it lapses and start accepting its responsibility.
By Abdulai Mento Kamara
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