Global Times Newspaper Online Those Little Things Maada Bio & That Excess Baggage Rant No other political party in this country has the penchant for self-destruction as the SLPP. The party’s uncanny method of self-destruction has been a major factor for its elusive quest for political power all these years. It all boils down to the antics of power thirsty elements, which is geared towards bringing down others and by implication the party in the most malicious of manners. Contemporary SLPP history portends if not all, most propaganda stunts the APC have effectively used in their propaganda welfare with them have been manufactured and perfected by SLPP members themselves out of sheer hatred for one another. As long as the political wind is not or has ceased to blow in the direction of certain people, they would not hesitate to go down the dirty self-destructive path. The self- destructive antics are likely to continue for as long as opportunists and self-seekers are not getting the support they need to hold sway in the party. They would fabricate lies, spread slanders and innuendoes. They would insult and defame opponents within. Completely armed with the SLPP home made weapon, the APC then sits comfortably at the pinnacle of the propaganda war and give their old rival a good run for their money. Absurdity is at its best. In the run up to the SLPP Delegates Conference in Makeni in 2005, opponents of the former Vice- President Solomon Berewa, particularly Charles Margai and J.B Dauda together with their supporters openly accused him of corruption and ineptitude. When he was eventually elected flagbearer, Solo B, as he was popularly known, was already dismembered of every decent character. He could hardly stand the avalanche of diatribes from the APC spin doctors who were miles ahead in the propaganda war. Just like Solo B, his running mate, Momodu Koroma also came under a barrage of negative propaganda from within. His detractors saw in him the potential of becoming Vice-President which they were poised to prevent. By deliberately branding Momodu Koroma, a Temne from Yoni, a Mende, the Berewa campaign team had already lost the propaganda war before it even got started. The consequences of that was a devastating electoral defeat. As recent as the 2012 Presidential contest, Dr. Kadi Sesay tasted the bitterness of the same old vitriolic attacks from the same old power hungry SLPP members who branded her a Southerner on the basis of her being born in Rotifunk, in Moyamba District. The list is endless. The 2017 Presidential election could be years away, but already the same old dirty game is rearing its ugly head. At the recent launch of the Andrew Keili for flag bearer campaign, Lawyer Alpha Gevao was quoted by newspapers as having warned SLPP members not to elect anyone a flagbearer who has an ‘excess baggage’. His excess baggage rant made screaming headlines in some newspapers. One can tell even without reading the story that it is the same old rhetoric designed to open yet a new front for confrontation and controversy in the run up to yet another election. By his (Gevao’s) definition, a person with an ‘excess baggage’ is one who is not electable or who is difficult to market to the electorate during election because of the so many skeletons he/she is adjudged to have in his or her cupboard. Lawyer Gevao did not tell us who, of all those rumoured to be vying for the standard bearership of the SLPP, is the one with an ‘excess baggage’. But one can only conjecture that the former flagbearer, Julius Maada Bio, who Lawyer Gevao and others had heaped so many invectives on, was the likely target. If that is so, I can only say to him that he and his group of campaigners have made a false start in their bid to have Mr. Andrew Keili elected SLPP flag bearer. The truth is that calumny campaign will get them nowhere nor would it impact negatively on Maada Bio’s Presidential bid, not least when his popularity is soaring day by day. More importantly, I am yet to figure out how much positive impact vilification campaign will benefit Andrew Keili’s flag bear bid, if any, because a campaign that is built on malice is doomed to fail. I would have thought that this team should be busy promoting its candidate who stands the risk of being beaten resoundingly though by Bio in his Kailahun backyard rather than wasting precious energy inadvertently destroying him. The truth is that Maada Bio has just emerged unscathed and unruffled from the most malicious character assassination campaign in the political history of this country; an excess baggage campaign is like pouring water on duck’s back. If lawyer Gevao and others have given up in despair and now want to give the APC the free hand to rewrite our history, I pity them. Because that type of history can only be read in the library of their Old Railway Road office. It can never stand the test of time, because the actual history is written in the consciousness of the people. Tom Nyuma of blessed memory was one of those soldiers who overthrew the APC. Until he crossed over to them, albeit grudgingly, Tom was on the list of APC’s most hated persons. Infact the APC hatred of Tom is evident in the physical torture he suffered in Bo in the hands of thugs loyal to the then APC Presidential candidate, Ernest Bai Koroma in 2007 on the pretext that he wanted to assassinate him. But no sooner had Tom given up to pressure to join the APC bandwagon, than he was declared a saint. I can still vividly remember a scene at Waterloo in the run up to the 2012 election, where Tom sat on the same high table with President Koroma as the former APC scribe, Victor Foh introduced Tom Nyuma as a patriot. Former Head of State Captain Rtd. Valentine Strasser was during the same period pampered by the APC and given a mouth watering incentive to hit at Maada Bio in a radio talk-show. Omrie Golley, a kinpin of the monstrous RUF was recently honoured by the same APC with a senior ambassadorial post and hailed by no less a person than the Minority Leader, Bernadette Lahai as a patriot. The point I want to underscore here is, if Tom was a patriot and indeed he was, what makes Maada Bio who equally laid down his life in defence of his mother land a bad guy? If Karefa Kargbo, the former spokesman of the NPRC regime for which Maada Bio is being vilified is holding a top job in this administration and has not been accused of having an excess baggage, how much extra baggage my brother think Maada Bio is carrying? If Captain Strasser who was Head of State for most part of the NPRC regime has not been bothered about the past, why for God sake would anybody want us to think Maada Bio is a monster? My brother Lawyer Gevao and co, this is what I envisage. If Maada Bio wins the 2017 flagbearer contest, and he is poised to do so, I am inclined to believe that the people of this country will not countenance your ‘excess baggage’ claim. It would be instantly dismissed as the same old song sung by few with the same mindset. 007DA504-A7C3-4844-876E-AC78B5996EE1 B08BAA7D-9265-4F6E-AD01-960EF3E5FB64 Blamas Finest, The Man Who Conjures Something Out Of Nothing!!!
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 12:31:40 +0000
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