Sierra Leone Telegraph: 10 July 2024:
President Bio is being accused of taking Sierra Leone backwards into an increasingly authoritarian State, where the president with the support of ruling SLPP MPs in parliament has captured key public institutions that are vital for sustaining a viable democratic society, including the National Electoral Commission, the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Judiciary, the Police Force, and the Military.
Not even the country’s Bar Association has been spared, after the president’s candidate for heading the Bar Association was steamrolled two months ago into taking up office, following an election marred by irregularities and violence.
With the passing of a new law banning the use of jury in criminal trials, and the refusal of the electoral commission to publish the disagregated polling stations results for the 2023 presidential and general elections, many Sierra Leoneans are afraid their civil liberties and democratic rights have been seriously undermined.
Yesterday, the President ordered the country’s Attorney General to proceed with the sacking of the substantive Auditor General – Mrs Lara Taylor Pearce, who has been in suspension for over three years, after publishing an audit report that called the financial propriety of the Office of the President into question.
A committee appointed by the president, which itself was condemned by many legal experts as unconstitutional, presented its investigation report into the professional conduct of the Auditor General last month.
Although the findings and recommendations of the report have not been made public, yesterday the Office of the President issued a statement, saying that President Bio has accepted the recommendations of the committee report, including the sacking of the suspended Auditor General and her Deputy.
This is what the statement says:
Another sad day indeed: our beloved homeland has finally gone to the dogs. Despotic power now holds sway, serving only its mindless desires. This power wields the full weight of the state and its resources, crushing to dust anything and anyone that stands in the way of its inflexible, brutal will—the will of one man who considers himself above others and above God.
But a day of reckoning will surely come. The grotesquely gushing Fountain of Injustice, Dishonour, Bullets and Death will one day dry up—perhaps sooner than imagined or imaginable.
THE PEOPLE OF SIERRA LEONE MUST STAND UP AND SAY NO TO THIS MONSTER
The walls of Maada Bio’s shameful and imprudent dictatorship and devilish capture of state institutions by this blood- stained killer that has become an albatross around our necks will continue to encircle Sierra Leone if our people do not stand up and demand that enough is enough.
Mohamed Kutubu Koroma of the Sierra Leone Tok Forum, a one- time supporter of Maada Bio,and who is not ethically paralyzed like the numbskulls defending this beast of no nature on this forum, describes Bio’s latest criminal aberration in unlawfully firing the Auditor General and her deputy as ” the worst epistemic injustice of his administration. ”
According to Kutubu, “for all intents and purposes”, Maada Bio has turned out to be “a colossal disappointment to all who pinned their hopes in him.”
If the Sierra Leonean people love their country, they have to do something to ensure that the walls of Bio’s disastrous autocratic rule crumble and come crashing down. Waiting further would be a tragedy of humongous proportions and they will have no country left when Bio is done with Sierra Leone.
We, the Concerned Sierra Leoneans, renew our calls for civil disobedience against this Bio monster imposed on our country by fascist neocolonialist nations. Bio is already governing with a stolen mandate and is an illegal President, having stolen the people’s mandate last year.
We do not want chaos in our country. We do not want Bio to send out his trigger- happy,uncivilized, blood- sucking Kamajors into the streets to continue shooting and killing our children, so we in the Concerned Sierra Leoneans organization do not recommend street protests. We think that a prolonged Sit- home strike by Sierra Leoneans will be enough to bring Maada Bio crashing down.
Today, it is the unfortunate Auditor General. Tomorrow, it might be other innocent patriots striving to promote transparent and accountable governance in Sierra Leone.Auditor General Lara Taylor Pearce was fired by Bio in reprisals for blowing the whistle on the rapacious looting of the country’s economy by the heartless criminal Bio, his wife and acolytes.
Sierra Leone must be saved and the onus is not on the equally criminal and duplicitous international community.The onus is on the people, whose country is being taken to the cleaners by this Bio degenerate.
KABS KANU
CONCERNED SIERRA LEONEANS
NEW JERSEY/NEW YORK BRANCH
USA