Concord Times (Freetown)
Ansu Koroma
7 August 2008
interview
Freetown — In an interview with this journalist By Ansu J. Koroma, Dr. P.K. Muana on the interim executive committee of the Sierra Leone People's Party in the United States and Canada explained plans for resurgence in 2012.
AJK: So I hear that you are a member of the interim executive?
PKM: Good Morning. Yes. I am a proud member of an interim executive committee chaired by Rosemarie Mokeh Yamson and also including Mr. Moses Bunmi Davies and Mr. Andrew Bangali-Pessima. This is the current interim administrative executive of the SLPP in North America. When we meet in Houston on August 8 & 9, we will be electing a new executive for the next 2 years.
AJK: What are the highlights of the Houston convention?
PKM: "Bounce Back 2012." Alhaji UNS Jah, the national chair of SLPP, will be in attendance and the interim executive is in close contact with the national secretariat of Mr. Jacob Jusu Saffa. We expect delegates from 15 SLPP chapters in the USA and other dignitaries and guests. Houston is the point of resurgence of the SLPP in North America. We will be discussing matters that are relevant to that agenda.
AJK: What will be those relevant matters?
PKM: The resurgence of the SLPP by reorganizing and expanding the party's base of support in the United States and Canada. We are under no illusions that the national party needs funds and our support and we will work to provide the necessary financial and other organizational bulwark to make our party very competitive, come 2012.
AJK: We hear that the Sierra Leone Peoples Party has been reorganizing itself in North America?
PKM: The Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) is in the middle of reorganizing, expanding, and re-energizing the party's base of support in the United States of America and Canada. In addition to the traditional base of support in states like New York, New Jersey, in the Washington DC and Tri-State areas (Maryland, Virginia and DC itself), Georgia, Pennsylvania, and the New England areas, new SLPP chapters have been constituted in Northern and Southern California, Arizona, Texas, The Carolinas, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio and also in Canada in the provinces of Manitoba, and Ontario (Toronto). Initiatives are afoot to initiate the Iowa and Minnesota chapters as well as another core chapter in Dallas, Texas and Florida. The objective is to have a residual base in all 50 states of the USA and in the majority of the provinces of Canada.
AJK: What do you have to say about the fact that the membership is old wine in new bottles? It is the same old politicians we know.
PKM: If anything, it is new wine in new bottles. The majority of recruited members are first time party members. The leadership group that is being mentored and developed is a new one. I belong to a new breed of SLPP leaders that is thirty/ forty-something or early 50s at most that is highly educated, au fait with cutting edge managerial and administrative practices in western democracies and in the most progressive and technologically advanced nations of the world; people who can negotiate policies, programs, and challenge accounts in an informed way with bilateral and multilateral partners; people who are focused, untainted by the politics of the past, and ready to articulate a visionary and progressive political leadership for our country. That is what Sierra Leone deserves; that is what the new SLPP leadership is offering, and that is what the current government is not providing.
AJK: So what then about the charge that you SLPP members are a bunch of Mende tribalists?
PKM: (Laughs). SLPP has spent too much precious time deflecting this self-same tribalism charge. For far too long, the APC has used this bogeyman argument (na dem Mende dem) to scare northerners on to an APC bandwagon. The fact is that SLPP was founded by a prominent core of northerners; SLPP cabinets have been always representative of Sierra Leone's population with a fairly statistically even spread; prominent northerners have maintained an active presence in the SLPP and northern voices will always be prominent in the SLPP. I am sure that SI Koroma's activist and divisive APC thuggery, constructed around the rhetoric of "APC na for wi dem Temne" is old and outdated. What did Shaki do to prominent Themnes like SI Koroma before he left office? Did Ernest Koroma take a prominent Themne as running mate? Who do you think Ernest Koroma is grooming as a possible successor? How many new projects has the APC taken to the north or anywhere in the country apart from the funded projects that the SLPP left? Is there not reason to believe that the APC has already spent the$60 million meant for the construction of the Kenema-Kailahun road? May be there is something you know, but the SLPP left the money; the donors, BADEA, have said so; APC has acknowledged. So where is the road after one year?
AJK: What do you think about the democratic culture in Sierra Leone?
PKM: The SLPP established a democratic culture. It is obligatory that patriotic Sierra Leoneans preserve and develop that heritage. The spate of political sackings, arson attacks on opposition party offices, harassment of radio stations, intimidation of voters, mismanagement of political and civil service appointments, top-loading governance and other institutions with party sycophants and operatives, and a continuation of the self-same predatory and acquisitive politics with which the current custodians of political power (the APC)left our country in the traumatic throes of a violent civil war that wrecked lives and our beloved Sierra Leone. Then you had the firebombing of Tablet, now Sylvia Blyden is arrested by CID and even when she has a prima facie case against the president's press secretary, we see justice being manipulated by the APC with their innovative "nolle prosequi" twist,. . . I have reasons to believe that the APC cannot preserve that democratic legacy which our country needs because its leadership is ethically challenged and wanting in probity.
AJK: What is your opinion about President Ernest Koroma's fight against poverty?
PKM: In opposition, the current president persistently said the "macroeconomic indicators" were good (because of robust SLPP management of the economy), but that the benefits of a robust economy were not filtering through to the masses. There was much noise about the Libyan rice (over which parliamentary commission he was head), but his own two shiploads of rice from Libya and other rice donations from other countries have just disappeared and now his brother has set up a rice trading business to sell rice. Wow! You'd have to ask what the president has done in the last one year to filter economic gains to Sierra Leoneans. Has he added an innovative edge to the pro-poor policies of the SLPP especially the microfinance sector, the national insurance and social security network, the subsidized drug program, the subsidized education programs, the subsidized housing plans, and the community support initiatives channeled through NACSA? Instead, the APC is busy ranting on about globalization while the price of food rises and the president's men and close relatives set up front companies to profit from Sierra Leoneans; education subsidies have been removed and the cost of education is mounting steadily, microfinance programs are being politicized, and there have been allegations of APC big wigs unethically intervening to withhold drug-supply deals for certain foreign interests they represent. Is this the pro-poor direction that the current president was speaking about?
AJK: Do you think the APC has fulfilled most of their promises to Sierra Leoneans?
PKM: You mean their promises of hardship and suffering or the extensive talk about providing electricity to all of Sierra Leone in 6 months? Well, you know how much the thermal electricity project in Freetown costs per day and you know about how many alleged bung projects are being created out of it - Of course, I need not mention the fact that Makeni, Port Loko, Magburaka, Kabala, Pujehun, Bonthe, Kailahun, Kono, Moyamba etc are still as dark as can be; I am sure you know well that there has been very little to no foreign direct investment in Sierra Leone. Has the APC government asked itself why? The ICAO has just declared our international airport unsafe and our country has just added another international sobriquet to the existing "blood diamonds" and "child soldiers" - it is now "Welcome to the COCAINE STATE - invest your money at your own risk." I am sure the APC will be attracting tourists with that reputation especially as APC ministers are alleged to be involved. You have heard about the mining sector being in crisis? Has the government really asked what its role has been in failing to stabilize that sector? You know well about current food shortages? Has the government said anything consistent about its agriculture policy? It would make interesting reading when the president and his men finally declare their assets after more than a year of hedging, baiting, brinksmanship even now as the ACC boss is being told that Serry-Kamal may overrule some of his prosecutions if he feels like doing so - call it "public good" AJK: But the president made some governance promises.
PKM: Well again, we are seeing a massive chasm between promises made to Sierra Leoneans in October 2007 and real policies. We were told by the president that he would request his parliamentary majority to initiate amendments that will split the office of Attorney General and Minister of Justice into two distinct entities. You may ignore the fact that he had said he was not going to appoint MPs as ministers and then rushed straight ahead and appointed Serry-Kamal (an MP) Attorney General and Minister of Justice. You know more than I do that since then "legal reform" has become a by-word for sending justices on leave and promoting pro-APC judges while thousands of yet-to-be-convicted detainees for such crimes as stealing chicken or property worth a few thousand Leones languish on remand in maximum security prisons while connected "detainees" associated with such egregious crimes as allegedly enabling the transfer of 700kilograms of cocaine through the country being offered the best of creature comforts.
AJK: So did the president lie to the Sierra Leonean people.
PKM: I would say that his actions have not matched his promises to the Sierra Leonean people. It is a fair point to make, I think. The venerable Samuel Adams once said that "If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honor of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation." We have yet to see these qualities in the president.
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