Stop using President Koroma’s name to threaten and intimidate others ! ! !

Published on December 15, 2010 by Cocorioko News · No Comments

BY KABS KANU :

The problem Sierra Leoneans have started having in this part of the United States is some backward and egoistic individuals trying to create the lying and deceitful impression that they are so connected to President Ernest Koroma that they have the President’s ears and can cause the dismissal of any diplomat or government employee by making false representations to the Head of State. This is a shameful , disgraceful and scandalous misuse of political connection and we at COCORIOKO will go all out to condemn it with every emphasis at our command because we know that President Koroma is not the type of leader who endorses such misuse of his name or his goodwill. The President is not a vindictive man. He is not waiting to listen to gossip to act upon to fire employees . This is a complete misrepresentation of the personality of the President. He has his yardstick for performance appraisal.

This newspaper has taken the uncompromising vow to promote the interests of President Koroma and the government all over the world and we think that we have been doing a great job in this respect. Therefore we will not sit down and allow anybody to sully the good name of President Koroma. In the same fashion that we do not allow the detractors of the government to get away with any unjustifiable attacks on the President, we will jealously guard the President’s name from being destroyed by political misfits who think that they can misrepresent their connections with the President.

There is no denying the fact that before Ernest Koroma became President , he had acquaintances , some of whom hailed from Makeni where the President was born and bred. However, that does not give anybody the authority to go around using the President’s name to threaten and intimidate government employees and diplomats. The fact that one is related to the President or acquainted with him does not bestow any extrajudicial or extraordinary rights on that person to establish extrajudicial authority over others. We have been witnesses to people recording the President’s voice on their telephones and going around playing it to others to prove that they do speak with the President. There is something ethically wrong with one taping the President’s voice and letting others hear the President talking on one’s phone. The reason it is unethical is that the President’s permission was not sought and secondly, it is an invasion of the privacy of the President. He was not told that his voice was going to be taped.He was also not told that the voice will be played to a whole kaboodle of people. This is patently an abuse of presidential connection. It is even worse when such connections with the President are used to try to intimidate and blackmail others.

It must be said that President Koroma is our Head of State and Father of The Nation. By dint of the President’s position, he is father to every Sierra Leonean. Despite our age in life, God places us in a position where we become the Father of a whole nation. Abraham became the Father of the growing Biblical nation of Israel. In that position, everybody is entitled to the President’s goodwill –And President Koroma has been doing a marvellous job in this regard.He has been a capable and competent Father of the Nation to the extent that when a journalist wrote defamatory articles against him and the CID arrested that journalist without the approval of the government, President Koroma called the journalist personally on her cellphone to assure her that he did not approve her arrest. Ultimately, the journalist was released. This shows that President Koroma is everybody’s Father in Sierra Leone. It is therefore wicked for any person to use their connections with the President to harass, intimidate and blackmail others. This is wrong and it does not meet the approval of the President.

If people are not trying to misrepresent the President’s name or abuse their connections with the President, why would a very insignificant and faceless person utter such comments in public : “I helped that diplomat get his job, and if he denies that, I am going to have him kicked out of the job for ingratitude ”. Is that the way diplomats are hired and dismissed ? What authority does a faceless man have to threaten a whole diplomat that he will have him kicked out of his job ? Did he employ the diplomat ? Is he the one responsible for hiring and dismissing government officials ? It becomes even more disturbing when the very diplomat being threatened is one of the hardest working employees of the nation’s Foreign Service to the extent that one of his bosses told the President that he is an asset to his Mission . The diplomat leaves home to go to work in the morning and does not return home until around midnight everyday .And that is not the end.He stays up late just to make sure that the government is positively promoted to the international world. So how can somebody who is not even employed by government threaten to kick him out of his job ? Isn’t it bizarre ?

It was people like these idiots who damaged the name of President Siaka Stevens by falsely misrepresenting their connections with him to perform atrocities all over the nation, without the knowledge of the President. I grew up at State House and The Lodge in Bo where my father worked and I can authoritatively say that the Heads of State in those days had no knowledge of the violence and other atrocities committed by their supporters who used their names to perform perversities.

It is high time certain people in New Jersey are told that the days when connections with the President were used to threaten and intimidate others are long gone . We live today in a new society of accountability and good governance. This attitude must stop IMMEDIATELY. President Koroma is doing a wonderful job and does not deserve his name sullied by misguided people claiming to have connections with him. If this attitude does not stop, we will start naming the culprits . We have no time for playing games with people.