Sylvia Blyden (SEA) is firmly at State House By Aruna Turay Special Executive Assistant (SEA) to the President at State House has told Awareness Times yesterday June 18th 2013, that she has no intention of resigning her job. Furthermore, Dr. Sylvia Blyden reiterates that the government has not shelved plans to charge certain journalists to court under Part 5 of the Public Order Act of 1965. She dismissed allegations that Attorney-General Frank Kargbo had distanced himself from her stated position. “People are hearing what the Attorney-General did not state. There is no way Frank Kargbo will say this government does not have intention to use the 1965 Public Order Act against reckless journalists. Those saying that really need to go and carefully listen to what he actually stated to STAR RADIO. I have said it before and I am saying it again that we, as a government, will soon be charging certain reckless journalists to court under the Public Order Act,” Blyden said. “Even the IMC Press release issued after their meeting with the Attorney-General does not at all say the government will not use the Public Order Act to sanitise the media. It merely says government will respect the rights of journalists. Of course, we respect journalists’ right to practice professionally and I promise we will also respect their right to a free and fair trial when we soon charge them to court,” Blyden said in a no-nonsense mood. According to Sylvia Blyden, the wild rumours of her resignation were borne from a deliberately cryptic message update on her Facebook page in the morning hours of Tuesday 18th June 2013 “which I posted as soon as I arrived from London”. She said it was actually a test to help her evaluate certain mindsets following “some of the unfortunate comments from folks within government circles”. It can be recalled Blyden recently has insisted that only corrupt and criminal government functionaries or those who wanted to curry cheap publicity, were afraid of prosecuting reckless journalists. According to her, on social media like Facebook, one can gather and analyse a lot of intelligence to aid the government and this she said she did “most effectively well for the past ten days” “My Facebook status update went viral and in the process of becoming the topic of discussion the whole day, I was able to gather a lot of intelligence on the views held by a lot of people within and without the government circles. This is going to make my analysis and other assignments for my boss, President Koroma, even easier as we now have a dossier of the thought process of certain individuals which we did not have before,” Sylvia Blyden revealed. “I am not resigning my job as the Special Executive Assistant to His Excellency the President. My work I do for President Koroma is just too important right to Sierra Leone as a whole and to the President in particular for me to just get up and resign,” Sylvia Blyden insisted. Asked about comments from a certain junior minister that because she did not go to work yesterday, it was a sign she was leaving State House, she said she only returned back to Freetown from London yesterday morning and did not go to work because she was resting from jet lag. “First thing in the morning I will be at my desk. Sylvia Blyden is safely ensconced at State House for a long time to come. My detractors better get used to it because I am going to be around State House working as a senior member of the Ernest Bai Koroma led Executive Arm of Government for a very, very long time to come. I am not going anywhere. My desk is at State House. Yes indeed, I do not need to be at State House working for President Koroma in order to serve God’s purpose in my political life but State House is where God wants me for now. That is the answer to the tests for those who read the Facebook message,” Blyden ended. Awareness Times has learnt that Dr. Sylvia Blyden, who holds Cabinet rank at State House, will accompany President Koroma this weekend on his visit to China to meet the President of China. It can be recalled that since her appointment, Dr. Sylvia Blyden is now an integral part of all official presidential delegations. She accompanied President Koroma on his visit to meet President of America Barack Obama and also recently traveled with the President to meet the Prime Minister of Japan. From all indications available to this newspaper, His Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma has enormous and unwavering confidence in the abilities of his able Special Executive Assistant (SEA) at State House.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:32:52 +0000
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