“Maada Bio and Kadi Sesay are already a winning team – no matter what”

Dr. Sama Banya – Puawui

17 July 2012

For the last two years or a little longer, the boast of the ruling APC propagandists has been that President Ernest Bai Koroma will defeat the opposition SLPP party’s candidate – Retired Brigadier Julius Maada Bio by a landslide victory in November, thus ruling out any prospect of a second round or runoff.

The recently bought-over journalists and cross- carpeters appear particularly loudest in the flattery. One persistently refers to Maada as a murderer and a thief, as well as an assaulter of women.

The charges and the vilification have been ceaseless. In the midst of it all, one can detect a slight change of tone in a few of them. But whatever the views of these Ernest flatterers, they will receive the shock of their lives on November 17.

A lot of noise has been made about the “pa dey woke”; about infrastructure; about the free healthcare programme; etc. Already B. W. Bockarie has begun to undress the myth about the so called free health care programme.

Honourable Musa Tamba-Sam – SLPP parliamentary spokesman, has continued to tear the APC’s boastful road projects to the absurdity which they deserve.

When Christiana Thorpe – the head of the National Electoral Commission, blows the whistle marking the start of election campaigning, the rest of us will take to the campaign trail and confirm to the people of Sierra Leone, that in real terms the government has done nothing.

In spite of all the talk about commercial privatization of agricultural food security, a fifty kilogram bag of rice is still sold above Le 180,000 in the capital Freetown, and for much more in many provincial centres.

We shall expose more forcefully the scandal of the differential in the cost per kilometre of roads, which are funded by donors and the ones funded from our sweat – such as the Wilkinson and the Spur road projects.

We shall bring to light with vivid illustrations how the fortunes of many a minister has changed, from their last asset declaration of 2008 to what they are today.

But quite apart from these and other discrediting factors, the general economy of the country is nothing to boast about.

A couple of days ago, His Excellency the President was quoted as saying that he had stabilized the economy or the exchange rate of our currency.

Of course the exchange rate has stabilized at FOUR THOUSAND AND THIRTY-FIVE LEONES TO THE DOLLAR, from the THREE THOUSAND LEONES THAT IT WAS IN 2007.

And that is just a taste of things to come. It is obvious that many of the obsessive praise singers have no time to learn from the lessons of history.

In 1948, in the United States Presidential race, all the predictions from the polls and the press (and by the way those people were quite different from our “cocoa-ebbeh” praise singers in Sierra Leone) were almost all unanimous – up to the eve of polling, in declaring that Governor Thomas Dewey would defeat incumbent President Harry Truman.

They received the shock of their lives when Truman went on to win, collecting most of the marginal votes.

Maada is going to do more than that in November, because he will depend on popular support.

Yes like I always say, “He who lives shall see.”

Yesterday our Presidential candidate delivered another brilliant statesman speech at the workshop held in Freetown – on what our party’s manifesto would be. He asked this boastful government a few very salient questions pertaining to some of the points that we have already raised.

Puawui will deal with the statement in the next Puawui edition, which would also carry the brilliant statement of the versatile running mate Kadi Sesay.

Maada Bio and Kadi Sesay are already a winning team – no matter what.