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Concord Times (Freetown)

Sierra Leone: Presidential Embarrassment as Diplomat Goes Berserk

Ahmed M Kamara

5 November 2009

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opinion

Freetown — How many times must the pres­i­dent of Sierra Leone face media embar­rass­ment because of the lunacy of some of those he appoints as his country's rep­re­sen­ta­tives abroad? What are the tenets of Diplo­matic appoint­ments?

Most Diplo­mats carry them­selves with the dig­nity befit­ting the office they hold. While oth­ers engage in fool­ish ambi­gu­ity that only cause dis­re­pute to the office of the pres­i­dent and seri­ously calls into quest­ing the sound judg­ment by His Excel­lency in mak­ing these appoint­ments. The media pol­i­tics of Sierra Leone is becom­ing a hin­drance to the devel­op­ment of a coun­try that has just recov­ered from years of tur­moil and now on the verge of becom­ing an eco­nomic pow­er­house in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.

When you have a sit­u­a­tion where the Pres­i­dent of a coun­try appoints his col­lege mate as a diplo­mat posted to one of the country's main mis­sion abroad and given a man­date to change the per­cep­tion the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity has about the coun­try when in fact there is already a press offi­cer in the same mis­sion with sim­i­lar respon­si­bil­i­ties, you have a seri­ous polit­i­cal mis­judge­ment right there. When the same appointee is also the Edi­tor of the polit­i­cal mouth­piece of the gov­ern­ment in the media and con­tin­ues to have direct con­trol of his news­pa­per, what you have is a seri­ous com­pro­mise of the inde­pen­dence of that press and diplo­matic respon­si­bil­i­ties of that indi­vid­ual. This not only exposes the inex­pe­ri­ence and igno­rance of the media machin­ery around the pres­i­dency, but It also calls into ques­tion the sound judge­ment of the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion who is directly respon­si­ble for the appoint­ment of Infor­ma­tion Attaches in Sierra Leone's mis­sions abroad. How can you allow this Mr Minister?

But again you have a gov­ern­ment who only makes appoint­ments like these by polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. Media per­son­nel who sup­ports the rul­ing party all find them­selves in diplo­matic post­ings as Press Attaches. The appointee in ques­tion was given respon­si­bil­i­ties to 'rebrand Sierra Leone' with­out being given the train­ing, resources or even the guide­lines on how to do it. The gov­ern­ment has failed to come up with a defined strat­egy as to how its 'rebrand­ing diplo­mat' would accom­plish his job. In the exer­cise of his duties in the mis­sion where he is postedâ-‰--â-‰he has inflicted fear and pro­jected dom­i­nance among his fel­low employ­ees and accord­ing to cred­i­ble report's, even the Ambas­sador has to dance to his tunes or would face the inevitabil­ity of being trashed in the press. In fact, the said diplo­mat recently claimed that he has been man­dated by the pres­i­dent of Sierra Leone to reg­u­late the country's media in the United States. This in itself is a dis­grace­ful attempt by some­one who is already being ridiculed in the media for his fatu­ous­ness, to even make him­self look more farcical.

Mis­sion employ­ees go to work every day with mixed emo­tions; not know­ing what to expect from an unpre­dictable char­ac­ter that has been planted in their midst more to fer­ment con­fu­sion and cause may­hem and instil fear in a work­place that has only known calm­ness all these years. I actu­ally even feel sorry for the oppo­si­tion party in Sierra Leone, the SLPP, who have come under con­stant attacks in the press by the said appointee in the name of 'rebrand­ing Sierra Leone'. Rebrand­ing a coun­try is a col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­ity of every man and woman born of that coun­try. There is no need to appoint any­one to do that job if a gov­ern­ment has the good inten­tions of its peo­ple. By work­ing to seek the wel­fare of your peo­ple and putting the inter­est of your peo­ple before tribal and per­sonal con­sid­er­a­tion, the suc­cesses and eco­nomic trans­for­ma­tion you will achieve will be suf­fi­cient in their own way to present a new image of your country.

This Diplo­mat has become a lia­bil­ity to the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Ernest Bai Koroma as he engages the media with reck­less deter­mi­na­tion to dis­cour­age efforts by some of us who are work­ing hard to bring about unity in the Sierra Leone press. How can you ask some­one to rebrand a coun­try that can­not even co-ordinate his own media appa­ra­tus. The rebrand­ing process seems to only focus on polit­i­cal attacks on the oppo­si­tion and those in the media who he appar­ently con­sid­ers to be in his way in the per­for­mance of his unde­fined role that he is still yet to even point out a sin­gle project he has embarked on to ful­fil the task given to him by his Excel­lency the President.

To make mat­ters worse, accord­ing to more reports from Sierra Leone, this diplo­mat has been assigned with more respon­si­bil­i­ties to man the press office in another diplo­matic mis­sion with spe­cific respon­si­bil­i­ties to cause chaos and con­fu­sion and to also report on the activ­i­ties of the APC-NA directly to the pres­i­dent. Recently, the rul­ing party's North Amer­ica Branch has been fac­ing lead­er­ship chal­lenges that prompted the inter­ven­tion of his Excel­lency the pres­i­dent to end the ensu­ing fra­cas; and as such, the Party thought it fit to plant this media buf­foon in their midst to mon­i­tor their activ­i­ties and report back to the Pres­i­dent. Why else would some­body who can­not even effi­ciently exe­cute his present job descrip­tion be asked to jug­gle between 2 assign­ments about 500 miles apart? You tell me. It reminds me of the press office in Sierra Leone where the press sec­re­tary is assum­ing the role of pres­i­den­tial spokesman when in fact you have a Min­is­ter Of Pres­i­den­tial affairs who is the offi­cial spokesman of the Pres­i­dent. This is a sim­ple coin­ci­dence of polit­i­cal naivety were in the des­per­ate pur­suant of polit­i­cal secu­rity the gov­ern­ment loses its plot and lit­tle atten­tion is paid to admin­is­trate efficiency.

This is only part one in our diplo­matic series. Our next focus will be on how this diplo­mat of a polit­i­cal lia­bil­ity con­tin­ues to harass mem­bers of the media in a relent­less attempt to over­throw com­mon sense and pur­pose and estab­lish an Idi-Amin Style of con­trol. Can some­one please help me with this: what are the titles that this indi­vid­ual pro­fesses to hold? MPE,PO,CC10 etc. If you have been a vic­tim of this diplo­mat ven­omous attacks please write to us about your expe­ri­ences and in our next instal­ment we will pub­lish your griev­ances with utmost pri­vacy. Please look over your shoul­der next time you are up to some­thing as the diplo­mat might be watch­ing and I am pretty sure he is about to make some innu­en­dos about meâ-‰-â-‰I can assure you Mr Diplo­matâ-‰-â-‰I am up to the task!

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