Ernest Smith
30 August 2012
As President Koroma remains unmoved by the latest cash for political favour scandal, his Vice President is hoping that the fiasco would go away soon. But international publicity intensifies.
In the latest issue of Africa Confidential – the world’s leading fortnightly bulletin on African politics, the Vice President’s shameful act continues to make headlines.
An excerpt from the Africa Confidential reads: “An American businessman has accused the Vice-President of not repaying a loan, but President Koroma remains untouched. So far claims of illegal foreign political donations could force President Ernest Koroma to drop his running mate in November’s elections.
“United States businessmen are accusing Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana of diverting commercial investments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaign funds for the All People’s Congress (APC) in the 2007 elections.
“If the businessmen are proved right, Vice-President Sam-Sumana’s conduct would be a clear breach of Sierra Leone’s electoral law, which explicitly bans foreign political donations…”
President Koroma’s unceasing silence suggests that he is supporting VP Sumana, who is being accused of hoodwinking American investors.
This is in direct conflict with the president’s attitudinal change mantra. The attitude of the second most powerful man in Sierra Leone may indeed be contributing to the failure of the government’s attitudinal change program.
Meaningful change must begin at the top and not the reverse.
The fraud allegation made by US businessmen – Mark and Kloeber against Vice President Sumana is not the only case facing the vice president.
Yet president Koroma remains defiantly silent.
Another US based company – Taakor Tropical Hardwoods Inc. is seeking redress in court for breach of contract by the Sierra Leone government.
This could lead to the spending of taxpayers’ money in order to settle the case, as was the case in the 2007 Wanza gun boat affair, when president Koroma paid out over $20 million in an out of court settlement.
President Koroma must stop tarnishing the good name and international image of Sierra Leone. He needs to come clean about those allegations of fraud being made against his vice president, as questions remain about his own culpability.
I hope Sam Sumana will use the money he just won for punitive damages to pay the innocent American investor. In life karma always catch up with you, ” You always reap whatever you sow.
“This is in direct conflict with the president’s attitudinal change mantra. ”
It fulfills the Agenda for Chop Mantra that has been exemplified by President, his family & his close associates.
The first Executive decision that the President made was choosing his running-mate. This he did before taking office. Beyond the rumours, there is now a clear picture as to why he was chosen. It had nothing to do with “attitudinal change”. As is said in Krio “Orange Tri nor dey bear lem”
If Samuel Samsumana was picked as Vice-President because of large quantities of (unexlplained) cash contributions, then EBK has to realize the foolishness of that. If it wasn’t a foolish decision then I dare say that one could assume then that it was infact a common design perpetuated by the Agenda for Chop drive exhibited by EBK, his family and close associates, which has culminated in so much unexplained wealth in the last four and a half years.
The recent photographs of no less than five recently built houses (In the Makeni area alone) by EBK can only be explained by fraudulent conversion, especially since at the time of transition he had only about Le80 million in his 3 bank accounts in Freetown and defaulted on a GTBank overdraft just after the first round!
We don tire! Ernest Baba and his forty+ need to GO!