A lot of the people that are presently streaming over to the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP) in the once in every five year political crossover season that are reportedly badmouthing the former All Peoples’ Congress (APC) government headed by Dr Ernest Bai Koroma will after President Bio’s tenure would have expired be the same ones doing the same thing or even worse to him to make him look bad before the next incumbent.
On paper, government is continuity. Incoming regimes need people from the outgoing regime. They do so as to maintain the human resources capacity of the public service. Some go as far as keeping all employed in government when they take over power so as to maintain a healthy unemployment track record. Such leaders would only replace the principals in the MDAs; that is, the managers, supervisors, etc but go as far maintaining the entire staff complement they inherited from the outgoing regime.
That said we expect that President Bio is empowering people, especially those coming from opposition parties, regardless of their tribal and any other affiliation. The President finds himself among a bunch of disloyal people who at the end of all he had done and is presently doing for them would turn around and betray him, if and when the need arises. Our president should know that in the game of politics, as in life, what goes around comes around, with vengeance to boot.
These are some of the people that President Ernest Bai Koroma met in the government’s employ after he won 2007 that he worked with for three months before coming with his own team of public workers. This is the history of the people President Bio is presently courting as if this courtship will guarantee him elections victory on 24 June.
Empowering people has always been in the preserve of the main opposition APC. The party is well known for taking relatively unknown partisans with talent from relative obscurity to household names. Many who are today calling EBK’s party and himself by default, criminals, were made rich by the bighearted EBK.
High on the list of people crossing over to the SLPP that will certainly switch sides after President Bio would have lost the elections is former APC vice president Victor Bockarie Foh. Another will be former minister in the EBK regime, Alpha Khan (formerly Kanu). We know not where KKY will end up next, especially after SLPP would have lost. Of the trio, Foh’s story sounds more like a typical rags to riches story after his elevation from relative obscurity to national and international prominence.
Foh was elevated from the grassroots position of a district chairman for the APC straight to the position of Secretary General of the APC, in what seems a quantum leap in the party’s leadership hierarchy. After EBK won the 2007 elections, he sent Foh as Sierra Leone’s Ambassador to China, one of Salone’s biggest and most important international development partners/assignments.
It was from China that Foh, who by then was with the APC for over thirty years, was elevated to the post of the vice presidency after EBK had sacked his then VP, Chief Alhaji Sam Sumana. Foh completed Sam Sumana’s remaining years as VP until the 2018 elections that saw the first Bio-Juldeh Jalloh versus Samura-Maju Bah presidential race.
After being made rich by the APC including the many houses he reportedly owns across the country, Victor Foh, while crossing over to the SLPP, called the APC ‘thief man dem’. Foh, an indigene of the southeast belonging to a party that started in the northwest was selected from among many who were more deserving and suited for the post of VP of Sierra Leone. The APC is the only party that is known for developing partisans from across Sierra Leone regardless of their tribal affiliation that elevates any partisan with the potential from zero to hero in a moment.
Thirty years and various leadership positions after he joined the APC Victor Foh has now turned his back on the party by recently declaring for the ruling SLPP government regime. But he is not the only one to have done this.
After all EBK did for him, including but not limited to ministerial positions, Alpha Khanu switched sides without blinking. Such people will do likewise when the table turns.
There was also David Francis, the SLPP’s erstwhile Chief Minister now Minister of Foreign Affairs that penned the now infamous Governance Transition Team (GTT) report that described the entire government administration headed by President Koroma as “a criminal racketeering enterprise”. It must be recalled that Francis ended up being named in some very questionable and even shady procurement and other such spending including one involving $1.5 million that many speculated resulted to him being shifted from chief to foreign ministry.
This should remind President Bio and the SLPP of the calibre of people crossing over to their camp. They are opportunity seekers without an iota of fidelity that will leave you worse for wear after they are through with you.
When President Ernest Bai Koroma took over the reins of state power from Ahmed Tejan Kabbah he empowered members of the former government heading ministries, departments and agencies by allowing them to work for the next three months before naming and introducing his governance transition team. Many people presently working in government MDAs from other political parties were left in their positions because EBK considered them valuable government investments and assets that should not be wasted on the rigmarole of party politics.
EBK found out that such people are Sierra Leonean technocrats sent to school on government largesse whose sacking would have not only been a waste of the government’s resources but a dent on the nation’s human capital development agenda. Their immediate sacking during the transition from SLPP to APC government would have seen these people leaving Sierra Leone to become the human resources pool of other nations.
President Bai Koroma maintained a lot of them after the first three months, including President Bio who received a lot of help and assistance from EBK before becoming president himself. President Koroma behaved like a father to them. Now, they have turned their backs on EBK and his APC because they want to continue in governance while straddling all the sides of the political divide.
It must also be noted here that EBK subsidised university fees for students, fuel, rice and the like for state workers. Before the end of his term austerity measures were instituted to save the day, a moment Bio capitalised on and used to promise the people that he would turn things around for the better.
At that time rice was being sold at Le200,000 per bag, fuel at Le6,500 per litre and $100 would fetch you Le750,000. Today a bag of rice is Le700,000, fuel at Le22,000 per litre and $100 will get you Le2.5 million. At the end of the day all of Bio’s campaign promises came to naught just as he couldn’t maintain the prices of goods and services, many of them tripling the 2018 prices.
Now, with Bio’s first term is ending like EBK’s last term, and with all the prices and other hikes that this regime was going to change for the better, what will these men crossing over to Bio, that he is helping, say about him when the tables are turned after 24 June?
More than anything these people should not be trusted, they will sell Bio down the line at the first sign of his failure to be re-elected. If they can have the audacity to do it to EBK, who are you for them to consider? The maxim or refrain here will be, “President Bio beware; what goes around is sure to come back around again”.