Concord Times (Freetown)
Alpha Jalloh and Tanu Jalloh
20 August 2008
Freetown — APC presidential and public affairs minister has assured that no former SLPP ministers would be held responsible for whatever they might have done in the last government.
Alhaji Alpha Kanu said: "the President has given me a specific assignment to make sure I tell those who were in the past regime not to bother or fear anything." However, former SLPP minister of lands, housing and the environment Dr Bobson Sesay said as far as he was concerned if somebody was guilty of defrauding the state he should be held responsible.
Alpha Kanu said when the results were announced in 2007 all of them were running helter-skelter.
"They wanted to run out of the country because they were afraid that their sins would catch up with them, but not this government. This government is not worried about what they did," he said.
Meanwhile, his assurance came almost two months after President Ernest Bai Koroma called for a commission of inquiry to probe former ministers and senior officials of the SLPP government.
The commission, to be headed by the state attorney and minister of Justice Abdul Serry-Kamal, was expected to take its bearing from a 17,000-page report compiled by a transition team set up by the President in October, 2007.
It consisted of information regarding the way state funds were disbursed and how projects were implemented.
In a June 16, 2008 press release issued by the ministry of information and communications, deputy minister of information Mohamed Koroma reaffirmed: "We are not going to tolerate a situation that would allow holders of public office to abuse state properties or embezzle state funds and get away with it." "The wrong perception about people in this country is that as soon as you are made a minister they think you are corrupt. So, the minister knows already that not all former ministers might be corrupt," he said.
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