By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
Forget about his irritating comic performances as a sort of an amateur National Dance Troupe dancer. Even if President Julius Maada Bio wins a Grammy Award for the seemingly “stone gee me road/jiga dae kam” public dances; that will not distract majority of ordinary Sierra Leoneans from the real issues which will define the June 24 general elections.
If he likes, President Bio could transform himself into a sort of a comic relief at every political rally or event, organized by the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), with the seemingly hope that he might become the next Michael Jackson. But that will not make majority of ordinary Sierra Leoneans laugh their guts out, forgetting that their pockets and stomachs are still empty and their dining tables barely bare!
And I don’t care a hoot about President Bio prefacing most of his political rallies or events with Humpty-Dumpty-like dances. Maybe, one of his plans for his retirement is to create a Dance Troupe. But after every stage performance, reminiscence of a tired “Ngorboi” tip-toeing home after a colourless show, our Commander-in-Chief always comes out more like a recycled joke than someone on whose shoulders rest the destiny of a nation which appears to be sitting on a keg of dynamite. Without any attempt at mincing my words, President Bio appears to have reduced the presidency to a tasteless comedy show which the audience always finds humourless!
And President Bio and his flatterers could wallow in their Joseph Goebbels-like lies and half-truths for the SLPP gallery. They could cook-up and sex-up data to give themselves the “feel good” feeling that the SLPP government has improved the lot of their lots. They could create lies and still believe in those lies like ex-President Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” brigades. But ordinary Sierra Leoneans will not be cajoled or bribed into believing that their lives are better-off today than they were six years ago. They who wear their shoes know exactly where those shoes are pinching them.
If President Bio and his toadies are now claiming that Sierra Leoneans should be grateful to the SLPP government for improving their lives; then why are they afraid of creating a level political playing field for the June 24 general elections? Why are they constantly throwing spanners in the works of the All People’s Congress (APC) and its Leader and Presidential candidate Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara? And why is the Bio-led government trying every political trick in the sun, which appears to be pointing at rigging the upcoming elections in favour of a sitting President who claims to have completed all his 2018 Manifesto promises and he is now graciously doling out bonuses to the starving masses?
And if the SLPP government has realistically fulfilled “61%” of its 2018 Manifesto promises, as claimed by one Civil Society Organization (CSO) which appears to be always conducting surveys that seem to be at variance with the realities in the country, then why is our “Tok En Do” President not ensconced at the comfort of State Lodge every day eating “Pemahun” or “Tangajessieh” (Sorry reader, I didn’t ask my Sherbro mother if that is the correct spelling of that much-cherished Bonthe Island food.)? If the Bio-led administration has fulfilled “61%” of its 2018 Manifesto promises, then why is our Head of State so jittery that he has suddenly found out that he loves Port Loko, Tonkolili and Kono Districts more than the APC? And if the SLPP government has fulfilled “61%” of its 2018 Manifesto promises, as claimed by that “independent” CSO, then why is it that majority of ordinary Sierra Leoneans are desperately desperate to see the back of President Bio with his SLPP government through the ballot box after June 24?
I have been waiting for some of these “independent” CSOs to do credible surveys on the human rights record of the Bio-led SLPP government. I have been waiting for their surveys on whether the Humpty-Dumpty-like dances by President Bio are in sync with the ethos of State Protocols. Or even do reliable studies on the cost of living in Sierra Leone. And I have been waiting for some of these “independent” CSOs to do credible surveys on the fairytale rags-to-riches statuses of most members of the Bio-led administration within five years. But promoting the SLPP’s agenda appears to be their main concerns which they always cloudily wrap in “independent” surveys and opinion polls! And they have been shamelessly shameless about it. But they do not want us to point it out because it will expose their SLPPness like unclothed buttocks of baboons.
But if the Bio-led administration has realistically worked to the satisfaction of ordinary Sierra Leoneans, according to one of our independently “independent” CSOs, let them allow the electorate to show their gratitude in the ballot box without any intimidation in the north-western strongholds of the APC! When a man has worked; he needs not shout his workaholic-ness atop the Freetown City Council building (now the tallest building in Freetown). But if he has worked and still working, it means he has not worked the work that needs to be worked!
And the humourless punch-line of the Bio-led administration is that the SLPP government inherited a “battered economy” from the erstwhile All People’s Congress (APC) government of Ernest Bai Koroma. This colourless humour has become tastelessly tasteless when one considers the fact that the claimed, inherited, “battered economy” has now been soullessly battered by battered-brains “Drunkardnomists”. And when one flings a dancing President, who appears not to have an iota of idea on Home Economics let alone Macroeconomics, into the cauldron of ineptitude; the resulting soup will be unpalatable!
Well, if you tasked an inexperienced Kekeh rider to pilot a plane, with Okada riders as his co-pilots and airhostesses; then the only thing that you should expect from that crew is a crash! People can’t give what they don’t have.
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