By: Yusuf Keketoma Sandi Esq.
There are many great things President Julius Maada Bio has done for which he has been credited as the first sitting President to achieve whether it is the implementation of the Free Quality School Education Programme, the repeal of Part V of the Public Order Act, 1965 or the selection of Sierra Leone as eligible to develop a compact by the MCC Board of Directors.
Marking three years in office has been a great milestone for President Julius Maada Bio and to put that into context you only have to remember that President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has been in office for over twenty years and Rwanda has still not been selected as eligible to develop a compact. Better still, you only also have to remember that under the leadership of President Julius Maada Bio, Sierra Leone is spending over 200% more than Rwanda on primary education.
Three years on, the President said he wanted to engage the nation as a servant of the people. It could have been easier to organize a press conference at State House for the President where there would have been fewer and regulated questions and scripted answers. He wanted to visit the studios and consented to the town hall meeting to subject himself to scrutiny by the media pursuant to section 11 of The Constitution of Sierra Leone, 1991.
Therefore, the suggestion by few critics that the President’s studio interviews and the town hall meeting were stage-managed shows either these few critics live in a parallel universe where even the air they inhale to survive is red or they are like computers which have been programmed with a soft-ware called Anti-Bio. Interestingly, the brilliant performances by the President during the studio interviews and the town hall meeting have shown that these “programmed computers” are now being affected by factory malfunctioning so they need to be reset.
In the studios and at the town hall meeting, he spoke from his heart about his strategic vision and highlighted the progress he has made. The President did not only demonstrate mastery of the issues but also never shied away from questions which are of public interest like the allegation of tribal bigotry against the Mayor, Yvonne Aki-Sawyer or the charge of intimidation of the Auditor General, Mrs. Lara Taylor-Pearce. For the first sitting President who launched the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy that seeks to protect women and girls, he knows that a national conversation on tribal bigotry or the call for more accountability of the Audit Service must be elevated above playing the gender card.
On the accusation of being silent on allegations of corruption in his Government, the President dismissed the allegations as frivolous claims which are politically motivated. This is rightly so because to be a serious whistleblower, it goes beyond being a mere beneficiary of leaked confidential information or being bitter if you do not benefit from political largesse. Funnily, it does not matter how often the leaked information is recycled or reposted on social media for sensationalism, the lawyers would say to you that allegations are merely claims of unproven facts.
For instance, any serious whistleblower who understands about governance would not cry wolf with an absurd allegation of Timber revenue shortfall of US$5.45 billion when the Gross Domestic Product of Sierra Leone in 2019 was about $3.9 billion. No sensible whistleblower would relentlessly recycle in articles the alleged US$5.45 billion which erroneously meant that the Timber trade revenue shortfall was almost 150% higher than the size of the economy. It is not rocket science!
Also, to simplify how battered our country’s international image had been before he took office, the President narrated the incident of the unpaid hotel bill saga in Japan by the previous administration. As someone who was part of that delegation to attend the Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 7) held late August 2019 in Yokohama, Japan, it was an embarrassing experience. For a hotel which is not owned by the Government of Japan you could understand that a country which has a history of unpaid hotel bill with a private hotel, the privilege to host the President of that country also gave them an opportunity for that bill to be paid.
As we waited in the lobby for the unpaid hotel bill to be settled on the instruction of the President, you could feel sorry for a man who had to inherit not only a battered economy but also something as pitiful and degrading as an unpaid hotel bill. Therefore, for any critic to say that President Bio lied after purporting to have conducted a bogus investigation, it is like having a quack doctor to examine a patient suffering from appendicitis and after the examination the quack doctor reports there is no evidence of appendicitis. The question would be: what do you expect from a quack doctor?
The President has made great achievements over the last three years despite the challenges which he recognized. For a President who has succeeded in fulfilling or in the process of completing 28 out of the 38 Manifesto promises, he is still not satisfied. It is like a brilliant student at a prize-giving ceremony who has won more than half of the prizes and still unsatisfied because he wants to win all the prizes. No doubt, the confidence of the President to engage citizens on the progress made so far and the overwhelming commendation from citizens about his sincerity have politically created a situation of setting the cat among pigeons for the opposition parties.
Unfortunately, the apologists of the opposition parties live in such a state of denial about the President’s achievements that one apologist boldly said she had not seen any New Direction in three years as though her eyes have been affected by cataracts. Sadly, to be in opposition against an incumbent like President Julius Maada Bio who is reputed for delivering on his promises is like being in a political suicide mission.
The fact is, both the studio interviews and town hall meeting have shown the nation that President Julius Maada Bio is someone who is sincere in leading the nation, honest about the challenges we face as a nation, modest about the tremendous achievements he has made, confident in the policies and programmes he has initiated and hopeful about the future of Sierra Leone. Certainly, President Julius Maada Bio’s media engagements epitomise the legacy of a true democrat.
