The Paopa regime headed by President Julius Maada Bio has been described by western diplomats, upset Sierra Leoneans and members of the ruling and main opposition as “a criminal drugs dealing cartel.”
When the then chief minister and first term blue eye boy of the Paopa regime David Francis called the regime under his boss’s predecessor Ernest Bai Koroma as a “criminal racketeering enterprise” he was at the same time describing the intention of the government headed by Julius Maada Bio.
Described as a “criminal drug dealing cartel” by members of the public, the Bio regime has shown itself to be focused on retribution against the APC without care or concern for how their actions would impact on the people and society.
Six years down the line, it has become apparent to the people that president Bio and his gang of merrymakers are nothing short of the worst sort of racketeers, the word his first chief minister so erroneously engaged to describe the erstwhile EBK regime.
Citizens have described the Paopa regime as a drug dealing cartel, the worst type of criminal whose main character is getting rich by any means necessary. Drug dealers know what addicts go through to buy their products not limited to prostitution, stealing, selling of assets, burglaries and the like.
According to sources in the diplomatic corps, the advent of the Julius Maada Bio led government has seen the rise in drug abuse among the segment of society most critical or crucial to seeing the back of the nonperforming regime. The diplomats contended that the drug abuse phenomenon was created in Sierra Leone by the ruling party government as a means of distracting the youthful voters from paying attention to what should have mattered most to them: a government of delivery based on campaign promises and the extant existential needs.
The diplomats averred that Biocracy can be described as the ruling Paopa faction of the SLPP’s plan to rule the country for as long as it takes them to retaliate for what the Siaka Stevens grip on state power did to the fortunes of the main opposition SLPP, either with Bio or any SLPP member as flagbearer.
“This is the same mentality when it comes to criminality in your governance space. If the Koroma regime was accused of stealing then this regime plans to steal more to even things out. So President Bai Koroma ruled for 11 years; Paopa will rule for the same, even more. Either by the book, hook or crook!
But how can Paopa accomplish this without placating the public?
“This is why we now have the drug abuse problem that was created by this regime as a means of destructive distraction of the youthful population from the failures of the regime. This is how you placate the youthful population in a society where governments are run purely on rhetoric and not delivery. President Bio and his first and stolen second term team of public workers did not come to work for the people. Their agenda was to restore the fortunes of the SLPP at the detriment of the development of the people and state. The Paopa gravy train was to benefit those who had long felt that they had been side-lined by the retrogressive Siaka Stevens precedency at a time when the strongman or president for life governance phenomenon was sweeping across Africa and the developing world. Through drug dealing, tightening of the democratic space through the passage of laws that can only be described as inimical to progress, the death of free speech and the right to peaceful protest, violent response to the people seeking to ensure their rights through the principles of democracy such as their right to assemble and protest against government’s plans and actions they consider to be wholly against their progress, corruption and the hoarding of publically accessed facilities, this regime has maintained a firm grip on state power, with no one knowing if and when they actually plan on stopping this bulldozing regime,” a diplomat familiar with ranking government officials stated.
In order to conceal their true intention for coming back to Sierra Leone to seek the office of the president and head of the government of Sierra Leone, the diplomat said Maada Bio and his cabinet and other appointed public workers returned back to this country feeling entitled to their positions and feel as if the nation owes them for all their years in self-imposed exile, sometimes doing mundane jobs way below their stations in life, adding: “They had all blamed Siaka Stevens and the APC for all of what they considered their comeuppance being away from home in foreign lands.”
He said: “The makeup of the Biocracy acolytes is that they are all from the diaspora and have imbibed the western mentality of manifest destiny, by any means necessary even if it means robbing the state and people in broad daylight and using the state security setup to ensure that the people are kept in line. Therefore although the prices of goods and services continue to rise, the main focus or preoccupation of the youth of Sierra Leone is not on governance but on securing their illicit drug of choice, which the government through many operatives or criminal associates readily and shamelessly supply the youth.”
Today, the demographic with the most potential to unseat or seat a government regime and the president is caught up in the destabilising and destructive nation-killing phenomenon of drug abuse and unbridled violence, “just as the major proponents of Biocracy would like it,” the western diplomat stated, furthering: “This distraction is necessary for keeping the general public disengaged from the real issues at play in the governance of the state by the party in power: the president’s failure to deliver on key campaign promises and the poor health of the citizenry.”
Speaking to ranking members of the SLPP who are opposed to what they described as “president Bio dragging the country back to the issues of the 80s and 90s they were unable to resolve during the junta and democratic dispensations”, they averred that president Bio and his leadership team, knowing their intention for returning to Sierra Leone after being unemployed for over 22 years overseas, allowed for the proliferation of illicit drugs thereby creating the perfect setting or backdrop for their version of the “criminal racketeering enterprise” to take off.
“Once again Paopa is here to retaliate and reclaim against the APC, not to benefit the people and or state,” the SLPP executive to nightwatch.
Some ranking members of the APC have said that in a “criminal drugs racketeering, smuggling and dealing enterprise” under a tactical and strategic planner such as Julius Maada Bio that cares nothing for the people and state enough to lift them out of their struggles, every plan or action is to benefit the planner of the project or programme, not the supposed beneficiaries. The APC stalwarts say under a “criminal racketeering enterprise” regime as described by Professor Francis, promises are made based on rhetoric “knowing fully well that you will not be able to accomplish or fulfil them as long as you get the people’s votes.”
The APC executives stated that “since president Bio and the SLPP Paopa regime landed on we the people and our government we have seen the rise in corruption related allegations by members of this regime, we have also seen the rise in assault, robberies, larceny, fraud, drug dealing and hospitalisation resulting from drug abuse, rise in criminal drug dealing gangs, drugs ghettoes and cartels, killing of unarmed protesting civilians, alleged extrajudicial killings of individuals seen as or known for speaking out and exposing governance lapses and failure to debate the Audit reports under the Fifth Parliament.”
The APC stalwarts say, the whole agenda is to win the people’s mandate by making outlandish claims and promises just to impress them out of their votes.
“While this political dinosaur of a ploy against the struggling peoples of the developing world circa the 80s and 90s are still employed by backward, violent, and corrupt regimes, the realities of the 2000’s are too harsh for the youthful population to cope based on rhetoric. The end game will be that ‘you can fool some people sometime but you can fool all the people all the time’, based on which the people will eventually see their dreaded and pitiful condition and unite against any regime that is either looking like or is actually oppressing them despite their many promises and photo opportunities during ill planned and delivered campaign projects that still fail to make any impact on the state and condition of the people and the well-being of the state.” Lonta!