LET US CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR SIERRA LEONE .
Reference : from the Awareness Times News Paper
As Lawrence Leema issues a very alarming midnight post based on a totally false and irresponsible allegation against the millitary adding Ex President Koroma as part of the crumps of political and character assasination .
The ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) has, through its spokesman Lahai Lawrence Leema, attacked the military of the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces as engaging in activities the SLPP deems to be akin to sabotage and treason against the newly elected President of Sierra Leone, H.E. Julius Maada Bio. This is the second time that SLPP is attacking military officers within less than one month. The first time was shortly before the results were announced that Bio is the duly elected president. That unfortunate attack on integrity of the military had culminated in President Bio having to issue a personal apology to the Military on behalf of the SLPP over the false allegations back then that military officers were planning to kill Bio.
FORMER PRESIDENT ERNEST KOROMA
In this second attack on the military by the SLPP, their Spokesman has also roped in the outgone president, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma whom the SLPP has now accused of holding secret meetings with military officers in his hometown of Makeni after he was no longer President. However, credible sources close to President Koroma inform this newspaper that since the change of government on April 4th 2018, the former President has not travelled outside of Freetown let alone visit Makeni.
*Our sources ponder if the former President has not visited Makeni, how can he hold secret meetings in Makeni?*
However, in his post on social media shortly before midnight last night of April 17th 2018, the SLPP Spokesman wrote thus:
_”The attention of the SLPP National Publicity Secretary has been drawn to a secret meeting of some senior military officers of the RSLAF with the former president Ernest Bai Koroma in Makeni city. If this is anything to go by, then let me remind the RSLAF chain of command that the commander-in -chief of the Republic of Sierra Leone (RSLAF) as stipulated by the 1991 constitution of Sierra Leone is His Excellency Rtd. Brg. Julius Bio, you either respect the people’s mandate or you quit the RSLAF; to venture any unprogressive path in this country now will be counterproductive. You don’t serve to (sic) masters. It is against the military law and codes for three officers to have a secret meeting without the approval of the CDS. So whatever you are up to, I advise you drop it with an immediate effect.”_
As if it was a planned exercise, immediately after the above words were posted on the official Facebook wall of the SLPP Spokesman, the post went viral around the world as many SLPP members took to not only re-sharing the unfounded and false attacks on the military and the former president but they also started to viciously attack the personality of the former president and to also denigrate the integrity of the military – all based on what is now a clearly false allegation floated by the SLPP Spokesman.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the former President told Awareness Times that the propaganda exercise by Leema and other SLPP operatives was *”very scary and dangerous”.*
“Former President Koroma has been in Freetown since the APC lost the elections. He has not stepped foot in Makeni. So, for the SLPP Spokesman to accuse him of such a serious allegation of holding secret meetings with soldiers in Makeni is very scary and dangerous. This is how innocent civilians like Salami Koker, a lady Salamatu Kamara and other persons like Col. Yaya Kanu and former Police Head, James Bambay Kamara got slaughtered in extra-judicial killings based on such false allegations during the last time the current president was part of a military junta in the nineties. The blatantly false accusation against President Koroma scares all of us right now as we just don’t understand what motivates it all,” the Spokesman for the Ernest Koroma family told this newspaper last night.
Efforts to reach Lawrence Leema for further clarity behind his post were not fruitful last night. A snapshot of his message on Facebook accompanies this report. Leema used to be a military officer some years back.
What is now emerging is a sustained campaign of calumny against the former President by the ruling SLPP of President Maada Bio. In the dark night of Saturday April 14th 2018, the eldest daughter of the former president was attacked in her private residence by a group of vigilantes including armed military soldier and an alleged bodyguard to the current president. Whilst claiming to have gone for two government vehicles parked in a former Agriculture Minister’s compound, the SLPP supporting vigilantes roughly intruded into the nearby compound of the former president’s daughter and seized her private vehicle whilst threatening to slap her and shoot her husband. The vigilantes who had driven off, only returned her private vehicle when phone calls ordered them to do so. Awareness Times newspaper is informed that very senior State House officials had since personally visited to apologize to the former president and former First Lady over that lawless vigilante development around their daughter. But despite such apologies, it appears the campaign of calumny against the former president, is continuing and now taken to “scary and dangerous” levels by interlacing the military into the propaganda campaign.
H.E. President Julius Maada Bio is currently out of the country attending an international meeting in London. It is not known what will be his reaction to the latest dangerous attack by his own SLPP party on the integrity of the Sierra Leone military of which he is the Commander-In-Chief. The last time, Bio had apologised and begged the military to forgive the SLPP for publishing such dangerous lies.
© *Awareness Times Newspaper*
Wednesday 18th April 2018
