News Story

FREETOWN: DR SAMA BANYA - PUAWUI: As I write this, the final rally of the ruling APC party is well under way. The crowds appear jubilant with signs of hyper excitement among the younger elements. Most of the public is simply looking, some with bland facial expressions, while a few others appear to look with disbelief at the APC's style of jubilating. In general, people are going about their normal business most probably praying quietly that it would all end well.

I have been around for quite a while and I have been a member at some time, and watched how the APC performs. Like many others, I am holding my breath simply because the vigilantes look for a fight even in the absence of an identified enemy. Will it be different this time and break up quietly by evening? One of the yelling groups has just danced past my Surgery; there is no dignity in their comportment and they are the ones who are likely to take offence at the mere presence of standers by. Such are perceived as opposition members; to the APC, he that is not with me is against me. By the time you read this piece we would have known whether I have been overtly apprehensive.

I listened to President Koroma's broadcast message to the nation this morning on the pending elections. The concerned President was at pains to admonish for violent-free elections on Saturday. It was a very appopriate message if it had not come from the Leader of the All Peoples' Congress. Mr. President was in the country when the attack on the SLPP rally in Kono took place. He was also in the country when the attack on the SLPP Member of Parliament took place in Tongo. Mr. President was away in Egypt attending the African Union Summit, or on his way home when the SLPP rally was Attacked by APC task force members on Tuesday. But a President is always abreast with events at home even when he may be at the other side of the globe.

At the end of it all, every fair-minded witness to those events has pointed fingers at the APC. I certainly expected our President to have come out with outright condemnation of the APC's barbaric acts, but nothing like that happened. Instead, like an over indulgent headteacher, there he was, lecturing to the rest of the class when he knew who the bully was.

And there was the President in Egypt, saying to Robert Mugabe, "Remove that speck from your eyes," at a time when he had a log protruding from his. And that precisely was JJ Saffa's point when he opined that President Koroma had no moral right to criticise Robert Mugabe. And someone has criticised him for saying so while another hails the President like a sycophant as a future Sir Galahad of Africa.

I am almost at the end of this column and, surprise,surprise surpise, two groups have just danced their way quietly past.Who knows, I may yet be confounded. Finally, my appreciation to Charles Mambu of the Civil Society Coalition for calling things by their name with regard to the current spates of APC violence.