APC panics in the face of diplomatic onslaught by the opposition SLPP

Sheku Lexmond Koroma: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 5 March 2012:

The government of President Ernest Koroma is in a state of panic in the face of the action taken by the opposition SLPP to cease the diplomatic initiative and engage the British government, which has exposed and drawn the attention of the world community to the dangerous political game of the Koroma regime.

Responding to the blistering assault on his government’s record by the UK Branch of the SLPP, we can now reveal that President Ernest Koroma has personally ordered the UK Branch of the APC to “do everything to counter” what the UK Branch of the SLPP has done.

The President is worried that the SLPP has cornered him diplomatically, and he fears that his government is now on the back foot.

Last Friday the UK Branch of the APC was locked in an emergency meeting in London to try to claw back their fading international standing.

The decision taken at the UK APC emergency meeting was to enlist the services of a Sierra Leonean – who happens to be a senior British politician, as well as to take a delegation to meet with the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Mr Simon Hughes MP, and if possible, to lobby the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg MP.

Quite how the UK Branch of the APC intends to “counter” what has been incontrovertible evidence presented to the British government about the remilitarisation of the country, remains to be seen.

There is also an abundance of proof regarding the decision of the Ernest Koroma government to import foreign voters into the country, to vote for his party in the November elections. News papers in Guinea and Liberia have reported this ugly development.

The UK Branch of the APC will be unable to refute the fact that a section of the country’s police force has been transformed into an armed wing of the APC Party, which has been brutalizing SLPP supporters as recently as last weekend in Gendema in Pujehun District.

Let the APC understand that the world of politics has moved on, and that the global village has increasingly become a small hamlet where those who use violence to hang on to power will be prised out by the will of the people.

Those who use their positions to commandeer their nation’s resources as President Koroma is doing in Sierra Leone, will be ultimately dispossessed of their ill-gotten wealth.

The SLPP will work collaboratively with other progressive forces in the country – including the PMDC, to intensify the struggle to prevent the APC from extinguishing the flames of our hard won democracy.

Rather than hurdling in emergency meetings to plot and thwart the patriotic efforts by the SLPP in alerting the international community to backward and petty tribalism; the re-introduction of gangster politics of the past by President Ernest Koroma, the UK Branch of the APC will be well advised to tell the President to change course – even at this stage and engage in a civilised form of political discourse.

We wish to put the APC on notice that we will continue to stand for decency and ensure that Sierra Leoneans will have a government that will come about as the result of their democratic choice.