News Story

FREETOWN: DR. SAMA BANYA - PUAWUI: This writer, like many others, is by now used to the position of the New Citizen newspaper as it quite often makes vain efforts at neutrality, or to maintain a straight effort in consonance with the motto TOLONGBO which it still carries. The Tuesday July 1, edition of the paper was no exception. There, Mr. Editor uses a lot of words and heaps laurels on the NEC chairman, Christiana Thorpe, for “her courage in defeating the war on election rigging.” He then refers to the rest of us who insist that the election results were doctored in favour of Mr. Ernest Bai Koroma and the APC and that when that failed to produce the desired result, she called an emergency meeting of the NEC Commission even as counting of the ballots was well past the halfway stage and decided to invalidate the results of 477 polling stations.

If the editor even today, could not detect the glaring discrepancies between the published results at 8 am and the hurriedly compiled one at 9.30, on September 17, then it is he, the edito,r and others like him who ought to hang their heads in shame. Of course the world and we in Sierra Leone acknowledge that the conduct of the elections itself was acceptably free and fair; our contention to this day is with the results as compiled by NEC. To that end, no amount of blatant newspaper hypocrisy is going to convince us otherwise until we get to the bottom of it.

Not only am I amazed, but I wonder how sincere and honest he is in his long discourse on regionalism which appeared to be the main thrust of the editorial. He writes, “The regionalism we have to fight and win is the shameless regionalism of advancing the cause of only ones region to the exclusion of others.” To which I say, “cheers Tolongbo.” Then he puts his foot into it as he continues, “Fortunately, so many Sierra Leoneans don’t mind whether all the Ministers of government are from one region or from one district ( italics mine.) as long as they are experienced, competent and progressive and voted solidly for the APC” (italics mine.)

Did the new citizen not read the many critical comments including from among those supporting the APC government on that very issue soon after President Ernest Bai Koroma announced his cabinet, almost to the total exclusion of all other regions? Is Tolongbo implying that there is a dearth of “competent, progressive and experienced” people in the rest of the country? If as I suspect, the current editor was too young when President Babangida of Nigeria visited this country in the time of President Joseph Saidu Momoh, the paper’s owner and managing editor was a member of Parliament. The Nigeria President reminded his colleague that Bombali district had a specific responsibility in the country as in addition to President Momoh, there were no less than seven important Ministers who hailed from there. (the Speaker of Parliament, the Inspector General of Police, the Ministers of Mines, Internal Affairs, Trade and Party Affairs.) Is the picture much different today?

In one breath the editor writes, “Nothing is greater than the nation; consequently no region is greater than the nation of five million. The good of the nation should filter to the regions. It is not the good of the regions that should filter to the nation.” For sleuth! What an exercise in double speak. May I remind the editor that “wi nor de wass wi face go up yah?” we won’t be taken in by meaningless platitudes.

When the APC task force attacked the SLPP meeting in Kono, every newspaper at least reported the clash, that is everyone save Tolongbo. To them it was a nonevent. Some days later, the paper was the only one whose correspondent witnessed an attack on the APC by the SLPP in Kenema.

“The last word.” We are determined to get to the bottom of Christiana Thorp’s fiddling with those voting results which resulted in her invalidating the votes of 477 polling stations.