The New Direction Government of President Bio is crumbling and almost falling apart as it approaches two years in Office.
The very strong expectations of the People of Sierra Leone and the exuberance of President Bio to work towards redeeming Sierra Leone from where he allegedly claimed to have inherited it is stalled and heading nowhere.
The ship captained by President Bio seems to be staggering in the middle of the high sea almost at the point of sinking.
President Bio has blamed this state of affairs on the inability of his team to deliver on their respective benchmarks as per the Peoples Manifesto and the Medium Term National Development Framework 2019-2023.
The New Direction despite their Peoples Manifesto had also developed an ambitious National Medium Term Development Framework 2019-2023.
The plan was in tandem with the Sustainable Development Goals SDG’s and the Africa 2063 vision.It was developed in consultations with our donor partners and it had designed a pathway for Sierra Leone development trajectory.
But how comes that things seems to be moving the other direction instead of following the proposed development blueprint?
How comes that we are having disastrous reports and ratings around fiscal discipline and public financial management?
With all the assurances that we gave the IMF and the World Bank how comes that we have to delay the salary of public sector workers and even have to resort to the bank draft browning that we had criticized the APC for ?
How comes that we would surround State House with diasporans whose outflows are very huge. Thier general welfare is a burden on the state. We are yet to witness any significant contribution from them with regards pushing the President vision .
The fact that President Bio has to express his dissatisfaction that things are not going as expected means the direction is falling.
This is where many Sierra Leoneans have described the President to be babysitting his Cabinet Ministers and other officials of government especially when he himself has discovered that things are not fallen apart.
The APC of former President Koroma say what you may were able to turn the country into a work yards in the first year in governance. In the first one hundred days he was also able to bring electricity to the world darkest capital city Freetown.
Even though people have their reservations about how these developments were acquired especially in terms of their cost ,people were happy that at least the government was able to deliver on these basic social service amenities which were lagging for the people of Sierra Leone.
This is completely different from what is happening now with the New Direction Government. They are struggling to even deliver on their flagship education project not to say the delivery of basic social services and other competing state priorities.
Almost two years down the line, the New Direction seems to be failing in almost all sectors and principally still blaming the APC for the current state of affairs.
The Government has not been able to raise its head above sea levels to pinpoint a clear cut success over the last two years.
Even if for argument sake we agree that they inherited a broken economy they have not been able to sustain that very economy instead things have gone worse beyond what they inherited.
The critical indicators such as the exchange rate,debt levels and wage bill remains very high and unsustainable. The IMF has cautioned the Government to work towards stabilizing the economy.
The MCC report of 2018 had rated the country 4% in fiscal discipline from an initial 47% in 2017.All other ratings with the exception of the Transparency International report (TI) have all pointed at failure and hence one would be tempted to ask what is new in the direction ?
New Direction Falling Apart!
