By Rev S.M. Williams
A toll is either a road tax or the strike of a bell for a death. This time round the APC has virtually converted road tolls to tolls for the anticipated mass burials of citizens when the toll gates would have been operative to take their tolls. From all these hardships the relatives and friends of the establishment would be subtly insulated but who cares. The fact is that the fleecers have been living life styles disproportionate to their incomes in spite of the futile Declaration of Assets by the Anti-Corruption Commission.
It should be noted that the same insincerity with which the APC caused our eleven-year war is being carried over with reckless abandon by the post war APC. The incumbent government has evinced no iota of altruism or sincerity despite their much-vaunted and failed Attitude and Behavioural Change. Their governance attitudes of exploitation corruption and woeful wastage of state resources continued.
The Bible states in 2 Timothy 3: 1:4 ‘’ But understanding this that in the last days there will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, prolifigates, fierce ,haters of good, treacherous, reckless swollen with conceit ,lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God ‘’. Guess which regime the cap fits in Sierra Leone! As has just been read being lovers of others is far from the creed of APC. This piece is not about anti-APC or pro opposition. It is simply about being objective about the governance of our dear country which we vilify by saying ‘’Land that we love ‘’ ‘’instead of self that we love’’. It is enough .Next to the love of God the love of the country is the best preventive of misgovernance. A person who is proud of his country will be particularly cautious not to do anything which is calculated to disgrace it .It is a pity that the top echelons of the APC are living without God and without hope in the world. All their glib talk about posterity is balderdash .They are anxious to have the time of their lives lording it over what they regard as purchasable voters.
THE CONCESSION /AGREEMENT
Many citizens are referring to the connivance between the Chinese who are acting like a rogue state and the APC as an agreement but it does not qualify as a legal agreement. It is in form and in fact an ignominious concession. It is needless to say that our parliament is most culpable for all laws good or bad, which is why I have said that the parliamentarians do not care a two-penny damn about making laws that will take almost a new generation to pay for the callousness of their forebears.
What is this thing that is called a parliament? It is composed of people who only sit there because they are known to have no virtue after the exclusion of all others that were not suspected to have any. They are pims of tyranny who prostitute the liberty of the people. That is what they are so you should not be surprised about the way they rubber stamped that insane so-called agreement. It is obvious to the curious observer of men and things that the purported construction of a 7-story party building on questionable land is a quid pro quo for the lop-sided toll agreement that will benefit only the APC , in a multi-party state .It should be borne in mind that if in China the state is synonymous with the only Chinese party it is not so in Sierra Leone. It has been foisted on us by an undemocratic government buttressed by a quasi-democratic party in Sierra Leone. The intrigue was not lost on the American Ambassador Hoover who quipped in his farewell address the innuendo that no agenda or ulterior motives in Sierra Leone were meant by the grant of $ 4 million to the National Electoral Commission. It was a diplomatic frown at the abuse of sovereignty by a notorious world power.
On the rationale for the obnoxious toll rates hired sycophants of the SLBC were at pains to get the SLPP interviewee to agree that it was a unanimous decision by Parliament. They were either silly or just ignorant to know that majority is not unanimous. It should be noted that it was due to the dissenting voice of Dr. Siaka Stevens at the Independence talks that was responsible for the formation of the All Peoples Congress (APC).And this is the convention that those deceitful interviewers are denying. The security of their jobs is more important to them than honesty of purpose. As it is the helpless citizens will now be forced to accept the fait accompli of an oppressive regime by using the only paopa trunk road by which goods and passengers are carried without any alternative routes. In avoiding the inhuman tool rates it should not come as a surprise for passengers to see sea routes as alternatives with all the dangers involved. It should be realized that though life-belts may be used goods cannot be belted. It will be interesting to observe the modus operandi of the Chinese in the collection of toll rates in view of the multifarious categories of vehicles, noting the manner in which duty waivers are granted recklessly by their host government.
It will be most unfair for vehicles returning empty from the provinces to pay the same tolls as when they were laden with commodities. Scraping off roads that had only been recently macadamized is simply wasteful. The APC is the party that phased out the railway that could have been a wider gauge without the need for toll gates. That is one of the earlier.’ Agendas for Prosperity ‘’of the APC. They led the nation up the garden path.
No manner of sabi tok can talk us out of the quagmire into which we are being catapulted by a self–serving government save a drastic review of the concession code-named AGREEMENT. We sef sabi tok. It should not be like the law of the Medes and the Persians. Umpteen years of counterfeit democracy by the APC has brought us to the nadir in which we find ourselves today.MAY THE GOOD LORD GIVE US A NEW HUMANE COUNTRY LEADER WHO WILL NOT BE A PROPERTY GRABBING MERCENARY AND WHO WILL BE GOD FEARING. AMEN AND AMEN.
TO CONCLUDE
It is understandable for individual citizens to be lawless due to drugs and other kindred factors but when a whole elected government decides to be dictatorial ignoring parliament and civil society it is time to stop it in its tracks. Running a state like a business for profiteering is unacceptable.In a tete-a tete with a petty trader he shockingly said that most of the citizens in the country who are not well connected will find conditions in hell only a shade different from those in Sierra Leone these days ; a satire on APC governance. Many of those who are the scum of the country would regret having been born in Sierra Leone but what could they do? Emigrants to Europe or Kuwait in search of greener pastures because the pastures in Sierra Leone are not green. The people are being reduced to despair and discontent because of the decay of the principles on which the APC was founded. From August the people will begin their toll journeys to the destination of dog eat dog. This is the comeuppance of the 4 for 4 for which there were wild scenes of joy .
I like to end with my casual refrain that we seem to be under a spell of monstrous proportions as a nation. How else can you explain brother against brother for the Presidency, party member supporting another party for the Presidency while remaining in her own party? Can you beat that? God save Sierra Leone.