By Idrissa Salaam Conteh
Will Alpha Khan Make a Difference for the SLPP in Port Loko District?
President Bio’s appointment of Alpha Khan as Resident Minister North-West with a cabinet rank is for strategic political reasons ahead of the 2023 presidential elections.
The fact remains that Alpha Khan is loved by the people of Port Loko but his popularity should only be analysed within the current political and ethnic divide between Mende and Temne speaking people.
It’s also clear that the minds of the people are already made up along the two political blocks. So, campaigning will be undertaken for formality sake to camouflage the international community that democratic tenets are being followed to the letter.
There is no speck of doubt that Alpha Khan will not be able to win a seat for the SLPP in Port Loko district. His influence in Port Loko this time around will be restricted to his immediate family members less than a handful of mormors!
The vast majority of the people of Port Loko district regard Alpha Khan as a shameless traitor and opportunist with neither personality nor any ideology. He moves with the wind. The SLPP narrowed its space in the APC strongholds through the massive sackings of northerners from the civil service and the uneven distribution of the national cake. I don’t see Alpha Khan changing anything in the APC stronghold!
WHY ALPHA KHAN BECAME SLPP
By Retired Lt. Col. Moses Samura
This is the intellectual dishonesty President Ernest Bai Koroma is referring to.
For this blind supporter and tribalistic man to have the nerve to say Bio is unifying the country is really disheartening and an insult to our intelligence.
How is he unifying the country when he is mendenizing all government departments, the military and police? How is he unifying the country when Bio’s junta regime is busy sacking none Mendes from government jobs to give to their southeastern brothers and sisters. If Bio had genuinely taken the path of unifying Mama Salone, believe me, you will not be hearing about the tribalism that now dominates the talk of Sierra Leone.
Even Bio himself accepted that tribalism is ok for him. The reason he he said he only employees his Mende people in key positions whose work ethics he claims he only knows.
Alpha Khan is fighting to be exonerated as an yampie and to be a true Sierra Leonean because according to Fatima Bio only SLPP supporters are true Sierra Leoneans. So, AIpha Khan is fighting to regain his lost identity, to be called a patriot and corrupt free because only SLPP people are corrupt free even if you were indicted for corruption as soon as you become a member of the Paopa SLPP all your corrupt sins are gone.
Know why? Because Sierra Leoneans elected a known thief and human rights abuser as President who sees corruption as a good thing. Why do you think Bio is proud to be a thief? Because his tribespeople, especially some of his Mende people think his thievery is ok and they defend him even though they attack and condemn other tribes for their corruption. This is the sad state of affairs in our country.
