The APC Road Show or Moral Boosting
It was a weekly BBC radio programme featuring Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe with supporting characters. It was hilarious but carried the strange title of the Goon Show. Its rating on the Radio Chart show was quite high. Shortly after the opposition SLPP’s first national Convention in March 2009, former SLPP Ambassador to the Republic of Guinea for eleven years, Dr. S B Saccoh resigned from our party. The poor fellow had vied for the national chairmanship of the Party but came away with barely 14 votes out of a total of some 400 delegates. He left Kenema where the convention was held in a huff. In his resignation statement the former Veterinary doctor and former deputy minister before his sojourn to Conakry alleged that the SLPP was tribalistic. In actual fact his ranting notwithstanding, nobody took the slightest notice. Our priority was the challenges facing us and our determination to get them behind us and move ahead towards 2012. It did not occur to the good doctor, nor do I believe has it still occurred to him that in his home constituency of Kalangba and Gbendembu in Bombali west, the SLPP lost woefully to the APC. His resignation if anything has spurred us to make a fresh beginning in many such areas in the north and in the former constituencies of Arthur Harvey’s , Makaya’s, Musa Koya’s, Issata Massalay’s Musa Tarawali and others and regain lost ground. There are already signs of that being achieved.
As expected the APC made a lot of noise when these people declared for their party, even where Musa Koya and Issata Massalay had to travel all the way to Moyamba to make their declaration rather than in their native Pujehun. Much to their disappointment we did not even bat an eyelid. Then there was a big show in Port Loko where many of the converts from the SLPP to the APC were presented to the general membership in the presence of honourable Vice President Alhajie chief Sam Sumana. Again the show only produced excitement among APC faithful. Again in the Friday May 29 edition of the government’s mouthpiece the new citizen newspaper, there is a big spread across two pages of a third gathering in Makeni at which “over 1000 former SLPP members who had joined the APC†were presented to the people in the presence of no less a personality than the party leader and President, his Excellency Ernest Bai Koroma.
The whole thing has become a road show which could only be compared to the former BBC “Goon Show†except that the latter was entertaining. Could it be that our friends are still shaken by the recent Pujehun debacle and are making desperate efforts to boost their moral? But if it is to get us rattled then I must hasten to disillusion them by saying that we are neither impressed nor moved.
Here is a sound piece of advice from an old man. The party would do much better for themselves if they would strive to attend to the burning issue of improving the lives of the people by bringing the cost of living down to acceptable levels. As usual this advice is given for free with no conditionality attached.
By the way Munda Rogers the Director-General of the Sierra Leone Roads Authority was in one of the photographs. I ought to let him and other over enthusiastic public officials know that President Ernest Bai Koroma is not amused by the involvement of government functionaries and Paramount chiefs in party politics. It is bound to backfire in the long run; Just ask John Karimu, Kanja Sesey, Justin Bangura, JD Rogers and others. But then things may be different if the affiliation is with the APC and under the APC. Philip Lukulay and Sahr Kpulum will confirm this.
In writing about the formal opening of the Masiaka-Bo road the African Champion states that the SLPP which started the project abandoned it until the APC assumed office. Read Puawui’s comments in the next edition.
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