The Government White Paper Is Becoming A Toilet Paper
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
It is satirical how the Government White Paper, that was released on Thursday 24 September 2020 by the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), is fast becoming a toilet paper. Even amongst the sympathetic pro-SLPP press; it is now a chorus that what their SLPP produced is a work of sublime thoughtless stupidity and a process bespattered with the same insincerity like that of the witch-finder in the British TV drama series—Merlin!
The SLPP shouldn’t be talking about fighting corruption when it is also neck deep in purported corruption or alleged corrupt practices. The entire processes that fathered the Government White Paper were flawed! The evaluation processes of the property owned by former ministers and government officials, of which they now face forfeitures, were also flawed. Even citizens who do not belong to the All People’s Congress (APC) are now picking countless holes in the White Paper, which tells you that toilet papers are fast becoming more useful than the White Paper.
Even President Julius Maada Bio’s sacked Secretary to President who reincarnated as the now sacked Minister of Agriculture, Dennis Vandi, is now saying that the Government White Paper, which his own government released, is full of unfairness and inaccuracies. According to The Global Times newspaper of Friday 2 October 2020, “the [now former] Minister of Agriculture and Food Security continues to insist that he was unfairly treated by those who presided over the recently concluded Commissions of Inquiry… It has to be emphasized that throughout the sittings of the Commissions of Inquiry, Mr Vandi was never invited, contacted or even summoned to appear before the Commissions even though he was in the country….” That narrative is being buttressed by Basita Michael, one of Sierra Leone’s fearless legal minds, who notes in one of her recent social media posts that, “Justice Biobelle George [the Nigerian Judge] clearly misunderstood his mandate and his jurisdiction. He went as far as to find some people guilty of criminal offences under the Anti-Corruption Commission Act, for which he clearly had no powers and sentenced them…”
That was, and still is, the fate of countless members of the APC which Dennis Vandi’s SLPP witch-hunted while carrying out their show trials at the Special Court Building at New England in Freetown. So, it is very good that Mr Vandi is feeling the same pain of being lied at which is now soiling his so-called hard-earned reputation. As I see it, if he likes he can stand atop the Sam Bangura Building (the tallest building in Sierra Leone) and shout his innocence. But their own White Paper says that Dennis Vandi, the now sacked Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, is guilty of corrupt practices just like Ali Baba!
I’m surprised at the newfound hymn which most of the pro-SLPP media are now singing against their own White Paper which they had earlier hailed as something holy like a religious book! As far as I am concerned, there is nothing like a half-thief. A thief of any colour is a thief! The White Paper says Dennis Vandi sneakily “borrowed” from the national coffers; so the money he “borrowed” should be returned to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. So, if the pro-SLPP press wants to pick bones with the White Paper it should be holistic not the cherry-picking they are now propagating!
It is good that the chickens are coming home to roost. What is aimed to have been a weapon to shame the All People’s Congress (APC) has now been transformed into a sword, which some of the best legal minds in present day Sierra Leone are using to strike the bowels of the SLPP. According to Yada Williams and Associates, “You need not have attended more than one session of the proceedings at Commission of Inquiry No.1 presided over by Justice Biobele Georgewill to conclude that he lacked the demeanour, temperament, professionalism and decorum expected of a judge. He ran proceedings as if it was some circus or comedy show. As his outlandish findings and subsequent recommendations referred to supra show, he was a showman who did not appreciate the remits of his mandate and hardly had time to do the work for which he was paid” (Their letter to the Sierra Leone Bar Association, dated 1 October 2020).
That’s the crux of the Government White Paper. It is a by-product of the SLPP’s “Governance Transition Team 2018” Report from which Justice Biobelle George did the adaptation for his circus. And if the sympathetic Global Times newspaper could quote President Bio’s own now-former Minister of Agriculture and Food Security to have said that the Government White Paper “unfairly treated” some “Persons of Interest”, then it will be safe to conjecture that the White Paper is only fit for the gutters of Kroo Bay! And I’m tempted to believe such because “if crocodile comes out from the river and tells you that alligator is sick, who are you to deny it” (to quote Chinua Achebe)? Dennis Vandi is, unquestionably, one of their very own!
But I am glad that some of the props, or creators if you like, of the current SLPP government like Dennis Vandi have suddenly realised how worthless their own Frankenstein monster—the White Paper—is. They are also feeling the same pain of those APC members who are wilfully vilified in the White Paper. And I am now gloating at the fact that the once advocates for the Commissions of Inquiry are now becoming the antagonists of their own creations!
One thing I hate to like about the Government White Paper is that the Bio-led government has set a brakeless train at full speed and most of its members are now frightful of when and where the train will derail. The manner in which the SLPP went about their Commissions of Inquiry, which fathered the White Paper, could be compared to a headless mother hen who jumps over a blazing fire knowing fully that her chicks are trailing behind her! And true to form Dennis Vandi and Baba Fortune, who until yesterday was Secretary to the Vice President, are metaphorically some of those chicks following mother hen over the blazing fire!
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with a challenge to President Julius Maada Bio and his entire cabinet: “He that is without sin among [them], let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7)! I’m still waiting.
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