By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
Due to the current commoditization of organised religion in Sierra Leone; even those who profess to be religiously religious in their religiosity might now be grudgingly tempted to agree with Mark Twain that, “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”
Like organised religion; politics in Sierra Leone is now what it is simply because it appears as if in 2018 some con men from the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) met hundreds of thousands of “fools” and were able to hoodwink them that there would be better tomorrows if they were given the chance to steer the rudder of state. And those deceptive acts of deception later fathered a directionless “New Direction” which has now left Sierra Leone adrift like a rudderless ship whose captain appears to be looking dopily at an iceberg ahead!
Sadly, under the watchful watch of President Julius Maada Bio, our local currency, the Leone, “ended 2022 as the weakest currency on the African continent with a year-to-date loss of 40.58 percent to the [United States] dollar, according to a Bloomberg report.” For the first time in over 25 years, the Guinean Franc has relegated the Leone to the league of seemingly used toilet papers. To say that the Bio-led administration has drowned the Sierra Leone economy in the cesspit will be a euphemistic understatement. So, the SLPP should not be allowed through the ballot box to steer Sierra Leone after 24 June this year. But if those 2018 “fools” exhibit their foolery at the ballot box again; majority of Sierra Leoneans should not be surprised if they start loading piles of Leones in wheelbarrows just to buy a bag of rice!
And the SLPP government’s flagship Free (minus “Quality”) Education programme appears to have some of the hallmarks of the cunnings of con artists. Even President Bio and his senior ministers, including his Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education Dr David Moinina Sengeh, appear to be so ashamed of, or embarrassed about, that shambolic sham that they have not allowed their children to partake in it. The Kenyan President, William Ruto, is on record to have boasted, and still boasting, that because he believes in the Kenyan public school system that is why his own biological children are attending them. But in the case of Sierra Leone’s Commander-in-Chief and his Lieutenants, they always talk about their government’s education policy but do not allow their own children to attend public schools! If a cookery seller refuses to eat the “cookery” she sells; that will be taken as an act bordering on witchcraft (especially if she also forbids her children to partake in the eating of it)!
Throughout last year, I kept writing about how the Bio-led SLPP government seemed to be conning Sierra Leoneans about fighting corruption whilst most Presidential Appointees were allegedly perpetrating and perpetuating unashamed acts of corruption. And as if to ice the seemingly con man cake with a sort of dishonest dressing, President Bio on Friday 9 December 2022, during the commemoration of the International Anti-Corruption Day, remarked that: “At the national level, we sharpened the teeth of our anti-corruption laws….At the same time, conviction rates are now at over 90%….” Here I won’t say that President Bio is lying. I will mercifully state that he is being economically economical with the truth which must never be robed in deceptive deception.
I state so because if he still keeps rags-to-riches ministers in his cabinet who, until their appointments less than five years ago, were not better off than church mice might indicate that the “sharpened teeth of our anti-corruption laws” are yet to produce the 90% “conviction rates” among his very own. President Bio should know that charity must begin in one’s backyard.
And it has always been insultingly insulting for the SLPP “Drunkardnomists” and “Paopagandists” to talk about their government dueling corruption when alarming corrupt practices are being practised with the regularity with which they inhale air! Year in year out, since the Bio-led administration came to power in 2018, Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL) has been reporting the continual loss of billions and billions of Leones through corrupt practices. Yet, at every commemoration of the International Anti-Corruption Day President Bio will shift the blame for his government’s ineptitude to the past government; engage in non-denial denial about grand corruption in his administration; dole out practised sexed-up data provided by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), and eventually produce that “feel good” aura to end his speeches, which always show that the SLPP government believes in its own lies!
At times, the manner in which members of the Bio-led administration invent lies; reinvent old ones, and polish rusty ones will make a certified con man like Bernard Madoff (the “American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history worth about US$64.8 billion”) looks like an apprentice. My point is: President Bio and his “Paopaists” have been hiding in a fog, which has now cleared!
And, suddenly, 2023 has appeared like an unwanted guest whose unwantedness can only be tolerated because it will be embarrassing to send him away at an unholy hour. The multi-tier elections are now closely close and the con men have started their cunning again. They now want us to believe that they have succeeded in selling submarines to a landlocked country! They are telling us that their government has completed all what was promised in their 2018 party manifesto—and that the SLPP is only giving bonuses to majority of angry and hungry Sierra Leoneans!
But the con men are forgetting that even the fooled fools are no longer ready to engage in their once-upon-a-time foolery. And the “Paopa” Brigades seem to be out of sync with the political realities in Sierra Leone as they are now trying to fatten a cow at the eleventh hour on a “Luma” day!
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with a quote from Abraham Lincoln that says: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Indeed. President Bio and his toadies will not be able to reinvent the directionless “New Direction” because the first set of “fools”, they met, have now realised that they were conned in 2018!
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