By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
This is not a joke. I’m seriously serious as seriousness can be serious. The Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) appears to have taken Sierra Leone from the gutters to the cesspit! And sadly, though, the SLPP has started drowning the country in the cesspool. And if it is allowed to steer the nation for the next five years under President Julius Maada Bio; the country will become a complete failed state.
And as things now stand in Sierra Leone, most members of the Bio-led administration could be likened to gluttons who have been given custody of the buffet table at a banquet. Both the 2019 and 2020 Audit Reports, by Audit Service Sierra Leone, are testaments to the fact that the SLPP is running the country like a starving child who chanced upon an orchard. And you should have no doubt about it; our country is now an organised chaos as our Commander-in-Chief doesn’t seem to know how to command the basic economic essentials that will address the bread and butter issues in the country.
And it is impossible to doubt that the SLPP is lording over a system that is not only heartless but one that has been breeding greed and meanness. If not, for how could the Bio-led government be implementing policies that are bringing more miseries and hardships on ordinary Sierra Leoneans? President Bio and his hangers-on know that constantly removing subsidies on fuel will have a domino effect on essential goods and services, which will eventually affect ordinary Sierra Leoneans badly. But they don’t care, as long as the Bank of Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Finance can provide Dollars for President Bio to undertake his overseas adventures; majority of the citizens can stew in their poverty-stickiness.
That is exactly why majority of Sierra Leoneans are now yearning for the departure of President Bio and his SLPP and the return of the All People’s Congress (APC) to State House in 2023. The APC is known for always running a capitalist economy on socialist principles, which is why it believes in subsidizing fuel, rice, oil, and cement. Unlike the SLPP, the APC has not been afraid of incurring the anger of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Sierra Leone’s Development Partners in its aspirations to implement pro-people policies that will reduce the burden of poverty on ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
That socialist principle is not lost on former President Ernest Bai Koroma who, in his Handing over Notes of May 2018, asked President Bio “…to take a decision as to whether to continue to maintain the subsidies on electricity, fuel, rice, etc. etc. or whether to remove them and send the citizens deeper into poverty? For my [APC] Government, there was nothing to debate; we saw no reason to remove the subsidies and we preferred to incur the wrath of Development Partners than place more burdens on our poor citizens”. This is how a political party that is pro-people thinks and acts. But the SLPP, which appears to be an anti-people party that strongly believes in the One Tribe; One Region philosophy, is so heartless and soulless that ordinary Sierra Leoneans’ miseries are unimportant to the ruling elite as long as they are comfortably comfortable in their State House offices!
Even in the United States of America and Great Britain, successive governments have been heavily subsidizing their farmers. Those who have been following the United Kingdom-European Union Brexit negotiations are in the know that the issue of subsidies formed a key part in those negotiations. Added to that, it is reported that “the EU spends about €59 billion a year on farm subsidies”. And the United States’ government has never shied away from subsidizing the Oil, Agriculture, Housing, and Automobile industries. This is the logical thing for pro-people governments to do whatever the odds.
But apologists for, and the “drunkardnomists” of, the SLPP are arguing that the Government’s subsidy on fuel is weighing down the national Budget which is why it should be removed. But a counter-argument might be that the things that are actually weighing down the Budget are the over-bloated Wage Bill and the endless overseas travels by President Bio with his never-ending large delegations. If these two fiscal deformities are partially healed, then those savings might be used to subsidize fuel.
And one of the laughable reasons given by the SLPP apologists and “drunkardnomists” for the removal of fuel subsidy is that, “A significant portion of benefits from fuel subsidies are not received by the intended beneficiaries in Sierra Leone, instead the products are captured by smugglers and black-marketers. It is more profitable for smugglers to buy subsidized fuel domestically on the black market, and then smuggle it and sell at market rates in neighbouring countries”. But common sense dictates that if the SLPP government really wants “the intended beneficiaries” to benefit from fuel subsidies, all they have to do is to go after the smugglers and the black markets, coupled with vigorous and efficient policing of the country’s borders. Simple! But the SLPP apologists and “drunkardnomists” are not done yet; they argue further that, “Because of lower fuel prices in Sierra Leone, relatively below regional average, it is obvious that the government is currently subsidizing neighbouring countries and other large corporations.” What a dumb and lame excuse. They can tell that to the ‘Paopaian’ idiots!
It is clear to even the most sheep-headed Sierra Leonean that the SLPP, which appears to be anti-people but pro-tribe and region in its core philosophy, is heartlessly heartless. Since 2018 to date, the Bio-led government has been burdening ordinary citizens with over-taxation. It has been harassing, intimidating, and violating the basic fundamental human rights and freedoms of citizens perceived to be members of the APC to the extent that President Bio openly insinuates that they are “terrorists”. And to add to those woes, the Bio-led SLPP government seems to have opened the floodgates of misappropriation, as highlighted by the 2019 and 2020 Audit Reports, with the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) implicitly playing the dumb and blind.
Now, the only thing that will save Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans is for President Bio with his SLPP to be voted out of office in 2023. It should be an act of patriotism for every right-thinking Sierra Leonean to commit himself or herself to such a goal. And it will be one of the best things any Sierra Leonean will do to show s/he truly loves Sierra Leone.
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