Sierra Leone Political News Round Up: The emperor's Clothes

President Ernest Koroma  and Jezebel Blyden

The presidential and parliamentary elections in Sierra Leone are just two weeks away and the campaigns are in full gear. The All Peoples Congress with its propaganda army of approximately 70% of Sierra Leone's journalists and pseudo independent radio stations have done their best to convince the people that things are better off than they were in 2007, but the majority of people are not buying the propaganda. Panic has slowly started to invade APC ranks as the realization is hitting home that people are no longer prepared to look at stale cassava water and call it fresh palm wine. APC has over the years tried to pass a fattened brown cat as a lion, but unfortunately,  instead of roaring, it can only say "miaow"

All the promises of 2007, the 20 thousand Leone rice, the 24 hour electricity, the food self sufficiency, the thousands of jobs, have vanished into thin air. The Krio people say "Dog dream die nar im belleh"  No matter how ambitious a cat is, it can never pilot a plane successfully.

The Rise of The Common Man

Pa Koroma has been given five years, he has done his best,  he has put in all he has and the people were never hungrier than they are now. Five more years is not going to change anything. The truth of the matter is that Pa Koroma has simply run out of ideas. If he is given five more years our country will be reduced to a nation whose population has only one ambition, looking for food to eat. When a man's greatest ambition in life is to fill his stomach, that is a sad state to be in as that is the most primitive of human desires, the very bottom of human hierarchy of needs.

The Pa Is Working For Him

The hardship in Sierra Leone today is almost criminal, whilst APC supporters parade around the country with inflated stomachs wearing T-shirts claiming "De Pa Dae Wok," mothers are having to put their children to bed not sure of where the next meal will come from, as almost two hundred thousand Leones a bag has put rice out of the realm of affordability of the average Sierra Leonean family. You can shave a chimpanzee, dress it up in diamond embroidered robes, rub its mouth with best lipstick, don its face with the most expensive makeup, but you can never make it beautiful. Ugly is ugly, and APC under Koroma is ugly for Sierra Leone, plain and simple, and even primary school pupils have now accepted this. If hunger was a war crime, then the APC leadership would be prime candidates for not so cozy rooms in the Hague.

The Pa's Work

Albert Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Sierra Leoneans have voted for Koroma and been rewarded with hunger and poverty. To expect that voting for him again will result in prosperity is like trying to make your husband into a faithful man by repeating the wedding. No matter how you decorate red pepper, it will always burn your mouth. Pa Koroma has done what he can, the people thank him, but it now time for him to say goodbye. For five years the people have been sold fake insurance, luckily the car did not have a major accident, now is the time to try a new company. By 2017 Sierra Leone should be a donor nation, according to De Pa. "Well Pa, dar wan nar lie, under you, ee nor go happen"

After all the crowd swelling maneuvers, the new face of President Koroma's APC is now verbal insults and physical attacks on the opposition women folk. The opposition vice presidential candidate Dr. Kadi Sesay this week became target number one. APC thugs composed special songs insulting the distinguished lady whilst their leaders danced to the songs, in an act that was not only despicable for its primitiveness, but dishonored the leadership of APC even more than the lady they were trying to humiliate, as it showed the true character of the  leadership of a party that has driven the country into the edge of darkness. Today's politics is the politics of 70s Sierra Leone.

Dr. Kadi Sesay

As I gazed at Hurricane Sandy devastating the East Coast this week and saw the response, empathy and actions of President Barack Obama and pictured the throngs of supporters dancing on the streets of Freetown shouting world's best at a president carrying a football, all I could imagine was that the emperor has no clothes.