By Hoccas Siwel and Ngele S. Lahai
It was the Lord Jesus Christ who, summing up a treatise on the threat to family and indeed all relationships, said in a nutshell ‘a man’s enemies will be members of his own household’.
True to scripture, Christ was disappointed by the people he trusted the most as he was betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter three times, abandoned by his disciples when he needed them the most in the Garden of Gethsemane, including Thomas who doubted his resurrection.
Since we can safely say President Bio is no Christ, the same or even worse is happening to him. Indeed, since the president’s enemies are members of his government, with more at the gates, the same thing or worse than happened to Christ will continue to happen to his government, unless he swiftly and decidedly does something about it. This calls for great and courageous political will/action.
When the president was running his campaign, he used Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), artists, and media practitioners and others to aid him to victory. His campaign promises to fight corruption and block leakages, of free quality education hence an improvement on education, and declaring a war on indiscipline and lawlessness with assurances of policies that would ensure a pro-poor government, so resonated with the public that he was overwhelmingly voted into State House.
As a former military man, the people bought into his ideas, especially the war on corruption and indiscipline, with the latter being the main cause of the former as they continue to feed off each other.
You see, towards the end of the Ernest Bai Koroma presidency, the people had become wholly disappointed in the APC. We all remember the local and international news stories by media practitioners and houses; we remember the continuous advocacies by CSOs; and the songs that made household names of a few and select group of artists.
After his landslide victory over his APC opponents, and as a sign of gratitude, President Julius Maada Bio, then thinking he was making a great and strategic move, gave jobs to many of his newfound CSO, media, and artist buddies, thinking that that would placate and keep them quiet, which they pretended to have happened.
But what President Bio knew but couldn’t appreciate was the extent to which his actions would come to define and affect his legacy. The president had forgotten that these guys he was and is still working with were also at one point working with President Ernest Bai Koroma against the former SLPP presidency of Pa Kabba, which presidency Koroma assumed.
What the president failed and continues to fail to realise is that these very same CSOs, media, and artists have made it a habit of hedging their bets by working both sides of the political divide for their own benefit, thereby playing their roles in the continued pillaging of the unsuspecting, believing, hopeful, and seemingly docile public.
With all questions and doubts of their commitment to the winning presidential candidate including their integrity answered because this leader have come to believe them because when he was in the opposition, they believed him, campaigned for and supported him until he won. There was not even a shred of doubt on the minds of the party’s strategists that these guys had reprehensible intentions.
These guys have so perfected the art of misleading and using current presidents while at the same time working with the opposition that some of them have become the cream of the crop of the long serving civil servants who know all the loopholes, corners, and shortcuts to take to corrupt the system and great and promising public administrators, to the detriment of the current executive, and the oblivious excitement of their next victim.
Three years down the line, these chickens have come home to roost. We are seeing evidence of their activities in how the current regime is underperforming, going against every campaign promise they made, especially ignoring the indiscipline that is the underpinning for corruption, violence, lawlessness, and leakages. Far from being pro-poor, the policy direction of this government of continued price hikes, gross financial mismanagement, and violence, even among members of its own household, continue to favour the haves and not the have-nots, who are in the majority.
The president is here advised that his enemies are members of his own household. Sadly, more of them are waiting to join their ranks. You should know sir that a house divided cannot stand. You know these people, Mr. President. Your work is now cut out for you to flush them out as they are there to sabotage you every step of the way, while waiting to do the same to the next unsuspecting presidential candidate and his or her team of strategists. Lonta!