BY KABS KANU :
People who do not support the ruling All People’s Congress ( APC ) Government–But are not manifestly SLPP –as well as politically-savvy Sierra Leone are united in one belief : Sierra Leone is cursed with one dilemma that is responsible for most of the nation’s problems : We have an obnoxious, dangerous, malevolent , capricious and retarded opposition party : The Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP), whose cantankerous political tactics are responsible for Sierra Leone not being able to see the light in her post-Independence socio-economic and political aspirations.
Whenever the SLPP is in power, national development is at zero. You cannot pinpoint any socio-economic and political development in Sierra Leone that you can attribute to the SLPP. If it was not done by the old APC led by the late President Siaka Stevens , it is the handiwork of the present APC, under the progressive leadership of President Ernest Bai Koroma.
The SLPP is a mentally, psychologically and politically retarded party which does not understand the role of an opposition. The SLPP would do itself a great favour to sit at the feet of other opposition parties in other countries and learn what a real, credible, responsible and responsive opposition should be doing. It was Dr. Don Brash , National Party leader of New Zealand who once postulated that the Opposition represents an alternative government, and is responsible for challenging the policies of the government and producing different policies where appropriate ( My emphasis ) . He went on : “Any Government has to remain answerable to the public at all times, and a good Opposition can put the spotlight on serious issues and have them resolved quickly”. ( My italics ) . If any opposition party anywhere in the world should take a cue and learn from this important definition of the role of an opposition , it is the SLPP of Sierra Leone.
The oldest party in the nation, the SLPP, in all its almost 60 years of existence, has learnt to be a responsible and credible opposition. The SLPP has never established itself as an opposition with the ability and moral will to produce alternate policies , where appropriate. Their forte is to trigger chaos and mayhem and disrupt national development. Neither has the SLPP ever established a niche as an opposition that holds government to account in a credible fashion. It rather depends on lies and insidious propaganda to make its case. Nor has the SLPP the capacity to seek to have serious national issues resolved quickly. The SLPP rather compounds, aggravates and exacerbates every serious national issue AND STEER THE COUNTRY TOWARDS CHAOS. The SLPP is a nationally and internationally divisive, destructive and unprogressive party and whenever it is in the opposition, all it excels in is hatching bloody military coups, insurrections against lawful and constituted authority, disrupting the peace and tranquility of the nation and spreading alarming, malicious, false and defamatory stories about the ruling party not only to destabilize it and rock the fabric of national development and national unity and cohesion, but damage the precious interests of the government and country to the international community.
The SLPP has consistently pursued this slash-and-burn system of opposition throughout its existence. In 1967, unwilling to go into opposition after losing the General Elections, they incited the military to stage a coup. They are on record as the first and only political party that introduced the once-professional Sierra Leone Army into politics just to subvert the constitutional will of the people. In 1982-84, it was the SLPP that launched the murderous bush insurrection known as the NDORGBORWUSUI WAR in Pujehun District and in 1991, while the country was making a significant transition to multi-party democracy, it was the SLPP really that brought Foday Sankoh and his rebel war into Sierra Leone, never mind the reverse psychology of SLPP fanatics in seeking to lay the blame at the doors of the APC. Foday Sankoh and the rebel RUF were a brain child of the SLPP in their blind and unquenchable thirst to wrestle political power , and when the invasion of Sierra Leone boomeranged against them and lingered in their strongholds, the SLPP triggered the 1992 NPRC military coup, hatched and led by political rabble-rousers who today carry the SLPP vanguard —Julius Maada Bio, John Benjamin, John Karimu and others.
As seen from the examples I have given, the SLPP is a very divisive political party that depends on exacerbating national problems , creating chaos and mayhem leading to extensive loss of life and destruction of property , and damaging the national interest to the international world. It was necessary to recount the bloody, destructive, unfruitful and unpatriotic character of the SLPP to enable Sierra Leoneans to understand and place in its correct perspective the open letter from the SLPP North America Chairman, addressed to donor partners , on the management of Ebola funds.
The first shocking and odd thing about the letter, which is full of lies, distortion of reality and naked propaganda, is the idea of addressing it to donor partners to fabricate stories about the management of the Ebola funds. I say “fabricate stories” because the SLPP will not tell the donor partners the reality–That the audit was ordered by President Koroma and the Government in continuation of their policy of transparency and accountability as President Koroma has already disclosed in newspaper interviews and at Yele. The audit is President Koroma’s brainchild in his determination and commitment to ensure that every penny spent is well accounted for by the government. Secondly, the audit did not mention President Koroma and key players in the government. Rather, the suspects cut across the spectrum of society. Most of them are in fact aligned with the SLPP as the Deputy Minister of Health, Madam Madina Rahman, stated in her exclusive interview with Cocorioko . Instead of conveying this message to donor partners , the SLPP will surely make it appear as if President Koroma and his whole government are the culprits named in the alleged mismanagement of the Ebola funds.
The SLPP always acts outside official and diplomatic protocols. Where has it ever been seen for a belligerent opposition party to address a poison letter specifically to its country’s donor partners ? Sending such a tirade about their country to the country’s donor partners would be for only for only reason–To estrange the country and its donor partners , create a wedge and force the donor partners not to help the country, thereby creating monstrous economic problems that would bring suffering to everybody in the nation. If the SLPP achieves its purpose, would they be working in the interest of the people ? Every Sierra Leonean knows that this is not so, but it has been the SLPP battle plan from time immemorial : When they are not in power, it is to create both political and economic mayhem for the nation, with the aim of triggering spectacular public unrest , which they hope they would be able to exploit to seize power illegally. This is how self-seeking and unpatriotic the SLPP is as a party .
What are however not shocking and surprising in the letter are the litany of lies, cooked-up stories , concocted stories and distorted stories against President Ernest Koroma and the government. It is not surprising because this has always been the forte of the SLPP. LIE, LIE, LIE AND LIE ABOUT PRESIDENT KOROMA UNTIL THE LIES BEGIN TO SOUND LIKE TRUTH. For instance, the SLPP are telling a whopping lie that “The top five companies awarded the biggest contracts from May to October 2014 to provide services and equipments for the country ‘s ebola response are owned and operated by President Koroma and his close associates”. WHAT A LIE ! ! ! For the sake of their own credibility , can the SLPP name the companies ? To be able to make such a blanket statement, one would assume that the SLPP had made a credible investigation and taken a firm hold of the facts before coming out into the public with these allegations . I can assure you, dear readers , that the SLPP will never come out with the names of the alleged companies . They are a figment of the warped imagination of the SLPP .
When the SLPP set their propaganda machinery into overdrive, they have no respect for truth or the dictates of the laws of the land. The SLPP-NA, for instance, allege in their letter to our donor partners , after lying about the 5 phantom companies : “It comes then as no surprise that the President has hastily taken a matter of law enforcement to Parliament, where he is sure , prolonged partisan debates will make room for its natural death .” WHAT A CRUEL, DISINGENUOUS AND DEPRAVED RENDITION OF THE TRUTH AND REALITY ! ! ! ! It is also a deliberate and feigned ignorance of the constitution. If this statement is not deliberately feigned however, it speaks eloquently about the calibre of the writer that he has such a threadbare knowledge of the constitution of Sierra Leone. IT IS THE CONSTITUTION OF SIERRA LEONE THAT MANDATES THAT THE AUDIT REPORT BE SUBMITTED TO AND TABLED IN PARLIAMENT, UNDER SECTION 119 (5) . Parliament, according to the provisions of the constitution will debate the audit , and “where necessary appoint in the public interest a committee to deal with any matters arising ..” The constitution does not specify between a 12-month or 6 -month audit. Therefore, President Koroma was following the dictates of the law and the constitution .This significant distortion of facts is repeated throughout the SLPP letter to the donor partners.
These two distortions , which appear in the first part of the letter, render all the contents of the SLPP letter to the donors void. The contents of the remainder of the letter cannot be trusted.
The only good thing about the SLPP’s zeal to estrange Sierra Leone from her donor and development partners is that they have never been taken seriously b. Sierra Leone’s development and donor partners have men on the ground who monitor events and are in full knowledge of the reality of situations and are not impressed by the cock-and-bull stories often peddled by the SLPP. The opposition SLPP has never succeeded to convince donor partners to stop providing development assistance to Sierra Leone to strangulate the economy and bring massive suffering to the people as the SLPP wants.
