Ex-president Koroma
By: Newswatch News Analyst
There are handing over notes that are delivered in a spirit of joy and those delivered in a spirit of grief. The notes delivered to the incumbent President by former President Ernest Koroma fall into the category of the latter. His handing over notes contained a conglomeration of self-adulation, pride, pieces of advice and overwhelming lamentations.
Indeed no human organization or institution can be perfect as the former President admitted. In the same vein no political party can be all evil or all good.
We are therefore at liberty to spotlight some of Ernest Koroma’s sins of commission and sins of omission because he obviously bears the greatest blame for the wilderness entry of the A.P.C. today; whether his worshipers admit it or not.
No democratic or autocratic government comes to power and goes about destroying all the bridges built by its predecessor. At best it can only improve on them which is where continuity comes in. This does not however mean that things have to be done exactly in the same manner of its predecessor. It is not what is done but the way that a thing is done that matters. The New Direction.
Under Ernest Koroma’s regime creeping fascism was closing its grips around our throats but by the grace of God the people refused to be throttled. And we are just emerging from a generation of unfulfilled promises. Indeed Sierra Leone was hijacked by an evil cabal, Ernest Koroma was not quite a swindler. He was world best when world best is taken to mean tantalizing the populace over the period of a decade.
Giving the devil his due the Ernest Koroma regime displayed a sprinkling of transparency. He said in an effort to rebuild and reduce the burden of poverty on citizens they continued reforming and continued being the most transparent government ever in the entire history of Sierra Leone. That superlative of MOST is questionable. It is only now that the public has known the unbelievable salaries paid to Heads of Parastatals. The assets of the President on assuming office and at his exit and those of his Ministers is still unknown in this kind of inscrutable transparency touted by the ex-President.
In this matter of transparency he certainly scored some points that should be extolled. And I quote: “In 2007 when I took over as President from the late President Kabbah (May his soul R.I.P) he publicly lamented in his Handing Over Statement of how, and I quote: ‘Making the Auditor-General’s Report available” to the public “before it had gone through Parliamentary scrutiny.’ However I did not share his views and as a firm believer in Transparency I ensured under my dispensation, the legal steps were taken so that as soon as the Auditor-General handed the Report to Parliament, it was instantly made available to citizens….” That was indeed TRANSPARENCY EXTRAORDINARY. What was the late President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah trying to hide? The catch here is not that the Auditor-General’s Report is not being made available to the public but what is being done with it by way of implementation?
TO BE CONTINUED