By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
In many ways Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce, the now suspended Auditor General, reminds me of Golda Meir, the first and only female Prime Minister of Israel, whom David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, once referred to as “being the best man in his Cabinet”.
What Ben-Gurion meant was that Golda Meir “had more strength than her male colleagues to follow through with what was necessary to meet objectives.” Unlike hundreds of thousands of male Sierra Leoneans who will tremble and piss and shit in their trousers in the presence of President Julius Maada Bio; Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce has repeatedly shown that if she were a man, she would have been one with strong balls! She is definitely a man in a woman’s frock! And if I have had the Shakespearean flare, I would have given a positive connotation to Lady Macbeth’s famous lines by evoking the “spirits that tend on mortal thought” to “unsex” Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce for she has been doing what most male Sierra Leoneans could only do in their wildest dreams.
This brings me to her suspicious indefinite suspension by the Office of the President on the eve of the release of the 2020 Auditor General Report. Since President Bio came to power in 2018, with his “New Direction” that doesn’t have any newness in it, he seems to have exhausted every advice in either Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” or Robert Green’s “The 48 Laws of Power” to frighten Mrs Taylor-Pearce into submission. But she has been, indefatigably, clinging on to Section 119 (6) of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone which states that, “In the exercise of his [or her] function under this Constitution or any other law, the Auditor General shall not be subject to the direction or control of any other person or authority.” So, if the Head of State is unable to either direct or control Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce’s auditing process or processes; there could be other ways for the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) to produce a rabbit from a hat.
And for all intents and purposes, it is an open secret that whilst the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has been giving the impression to the entire world that members of the Bio administration are incorruptible; it is the Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) which has been serving as an antithesis to such a façade. Whilst the ACC has only been going after members of the All People’s Congress (APC) for perceived corruption; the last two Auditor General’s Reports have shown that most members of the SLPP are worst than Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves!
So, her indefinite suspension doesn’t come to me as a surprise from a government that has repetitively revealed that it doesn’t have an iota of respect for the1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone. Sacking Sierra Leoneans who have security of Tenure of Office, and who are not members of his tribe, appears to have been a pastime of President Bio. And Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce is the latest casualty in the mopping-up operation of a government that appears to believe solely in the “gathering of the tribe”.
Even alleged pro-SLPP Civil Society activists like Andrew Lavalie and Ibrahim Tommy, of the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) and the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) respectively, are so embarrassed by Mrs Taylor-Pearce’s indefinite suspension that they removed their tongues from their cheeks and grudgingly spoke truth to power. A Press Statement from IGR, dated Thursday 11 November 2021, noted that, “…We find it particularly difficult to understand this decision given the fact that Madam Taylor-Pearce has for over a decade, provided high-quality service to Sierra Leone’s supreme audit body to the point of becoming a beacon of integrity in the field of public financial management…” Lavalie and Tommy’s statements on the matter could best be described as home truths from home boys! Or that their government has placed them in such a funny position that they have no alternative but to scoop the little credibility they now have by speaking the truth and shaming Lucifer.
But the surprising thing about this whole imbroglio is the fact that the once-upon-a-time anti-APC vociferous Renaissance Movement Sierra Leone (RMSL) has to be literally dragged by the collar before it can reluctantly say, in a Press Statement on 13 November 2021, “that the Audit Service Sierra Leone is a critical institution to not only the public finance management architecture, but also in the fight against corruption and reduction of waste in public expenditure….” And in the same breath, the SLPP-polluted RMSL shamefacedly “expresses its unease about the timeliness of the suspension [of Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce] by President Julius Maada Bio…”
And the timeliness, or should I say the un-timeliness, of the Auditor General’s indefinite suspension has shaken the grapevine, making the scandalous allegations taking the form of either an Italian Mafia or Mexican cartel scripts. Chernor Bah, of the Africanist Press, is now conjecturing that, “the Auditor General has been suspended ahead of the release of the 2020 Audit Report. The Report allegedly indicts the President and his wife, the former Minister of Finance, and State House officials do not want it released in its current form.” And as if to twist the dagger fatally, Mr Bah is also alleging that during the auditing process it was discovered that “At least, five of the hotel receipts presented by the President’s Office to justify his travel expenses were fake. The hotels denied issuing the said receipts. The President’s Office doesn’t want these specific details in the 2020 Audit Report.” These are serious allegations that are inferring that the Bio administration wants Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce to step aside whilst the would-be 2020 Audit Report is being sexed-up and whitewashed to be eventually released in a contaminated form!
But the impeccable, honest, and consistent character of Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce is not also lost on the BBC reporter in Freetown, Umaru Fofana. He noted in his report last Thursday that the suspended Auditor General “…has been consistent in releasing hard-hitting audit reports about the handling of state resources by the former and present government.” In simple logic: If Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce had highlighted financial misappropriations of Government funds during the erstwhile APC government of Ernest Bai Koroma and still doing the same under the watchful watch of President Bio; then she cannot be accused of being an agent of the opposition. It simply doesn’t add up, to use Dr Sama Puawi Banya’s phrase.
But even if the Auditor General is sacked today it won’t change the fact that her last two annual Audit Reports highlighted massive misappropriations of state funds even by the Offices of the First Family. Even the SLPP-leaning Andrew Lavalie knows that Mrs Lara Taylor-Pearce has been doing her job professionally without any partisan icing. That’s why in their Press Statement, under review, the IGR further noted that she had been running “…an institution promoting state accountability and good governance, and given the reputation that the Auditor General has built over the years, we are appalled by this move, particularly coming just weeks before the release of the annual audit report….” Well, “if crocodile comes out from the river and tells you that alligator is sick, who are you to deny,” to quote Chinua Achebe.
And when the King suspends the witch-finder on the eve of a witch-hunting exercise; it may mean that the Queen might have moaned in the King’s ears, at the pinnacle of passion, that she and the King’s mother are witches.
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