2014 - # MY VIEW# Our nation suffers a long standing leadership crises. My belief is that a society without a visionary leadership is bound to collapse! The much taunted attitude of the people constitutes just about 10% of the nations problem. And undoubtedly, that could be solved in no time with a robust leadership! When d govt wanted people to stay at home it happened; when they thought that a surge was necessary its now being enforced. When they want people to stay home till 10am or so for a national cleaning exercise nothing hinders it! Its natural that isolated incidents of disibedience may occure in such instances to constitute d 10% mentioned supra. Ill assure u that most SLeoneans are cowards especially after the 10yrs civil carnage otherwise we would have been witnessing frequents industrial strikes, national demonstrations etc for the many wrongs which our leaders indulge in with impunity! From my close observation, Ive come to a safe conclusion that our National Constitution is responsible for many of the ills in our country! If youve taken a close look at that Constitution, u would agree with me that it gives any incumbent president overwhelming powers. And this gives way to what d the political science students would refer to as Patronage. By our Constitution the president appoints d Chief Justice; the A-G & Mins of Justice(y not split these two offices in d first place); the Ombudsman; the Inspector General of Police; the ACC Comissioner and many more including heads of parastatals, judges, and the Director General of the SLBC. These appointments done by the presidents(read ily approved by successive rubber-stamp Parliament) unquestionably make room for patronage. This effectively means that all these appointees are accountable to the president who can simply decide not to renew a term of office of his appointees if he thinks that they have not been working in HIS interest(not necessarily in the interest of the country at large). This is the reason why many of such people will fall on praise-singing the name of the president whenever they are on air- they desire to protect their office. So praise-singing is a good strategy for them. But y not create independent boards to look into recruitments to those offices? This same Constitution makes room for what u may call the winner takes all thereby excluding opposition party members from governance. The result of that is, the opposition then sees nothing good done by d incumbent govt even where the latter is impressive because they feel left out in d governance of the nation. In other countries, after elections, opposition members are genuinely given appointments to help the incumbent dicharge its mandate. Here, such appointments mostly happen when an incumbent wants to get d appointed opposition member to change his/ her party card or loyalty. It is also my view that generally the educated and the affluent alike are more responsible for the more than 50yrs of under-development of our beloved nation! Many of these are the ones that mislead the poor n uneducated. Many of these are the gluttons in our siciety. Many are the political fanatics who are only one-sided n refuse to think out of the box. Many are the ones who dont want others to achieve like them. Ask the law n medical students around. In 2014 we started doing well in business/ investments with more private companies coming in though such development was hardly evident on the lives of ordinary citizens. Yes our country was doing great in road infrastructure. Many roads were being constructed across the country though kick-backs affected the quality of the roads. But it was better than nothing! Recently two of our great mining companies went into liquidation to make d situation more precarious. The mining agreement itself was been questionable ab initio. But Im sure that pretty soon d govt will do something to help d laid-off workers and bring those companies back to their feet(through a bailout or something, I cant tell). And then Ebola surfaced to devour the lives of over 2,000 compatriots. It still continues to claim lives. The economy is almost at its knees. Education has come to an abrupt halt. D socio- religious domains have not gone untouchable! Its about 8mths now, d disease is still ravaging. D reasons common on the lips of our leaders are that d disease is new to d country and that the attidue of oridary SLeoneans keeps ebola thriving. Ive dealt with the latter reason already. For the former, I sometimes ask whether Nigeria for e.g (where the disease has been eradicated) has encountered ebola before now or whether Guinea n Liberia(where d outbreak is subsiding) have known ebola before. Dont u really think that ebola has got its toll on us as a result of poor health infrastructure and lack of strong leadership? Do ordinary SLeoneans trust those leading d fight against ebola? Havent u heard of corrupt practices surrounding d ebola funds? Havent u listened to many SLeoneans say that some people in d fight dont really want to see ebola vanish because they are making money out of it? 2014 - # MY VIEW# Our nation suffers a long standing leadership crises. My belief is that a society without a visionary leadership is bound to collapse! The much taunted attitude of the people constitutes just about 10% of the nations problem. And undoubtedly, that could be solved in no time with a robust leadership! When d govt wanted people to stay at home it happened; when they thought that a surge was necessary its now being enforced. When they want people to stay home till 10am or so for a national cleaning exercise nothing hinders it! Its natural that isolated incidents of disibedience may occure in such instances to constitute d 10% mentioned supra. Ill assure u that most SLeoneans are cowards especially after the 10yrs civil carnage otherwise we would have been witnessing frequents industrial strikes, national demonstrations etc for the many wrongs which our leaders indulge in with impunity! From my close observation, Ive come to a safe conclusion that our National Constitution is responsible for many of the ills in our country! If youve taken a close look at that Constitution, u would agree with me that it gives any incumbent president overwhelming powers. And this gives way to what d the political science students would refer to as Patronage. By our Constitution the president appoints d Chief Justice; the A-G & Mins of Justice(y not split these two offices in d first place); the Ombudsman; the Inspector General of Police; the ACC Comissioner and many more including heads of parastatals, judges, and the Director General of the SLBC. These appointments done by the presidents(read ily approved by successive rubber-stamp Parliament) unquestionably make room for patronage. This effectively means that all these appointees are accountable to the president who can simply decide not to renew a term of office of his appointees if he thinks that they have not been working in HIS interest(not necessarily in the interest of the country at large). This is the reason why many of such people will fall on praise-singing the name of the president whenever they are on air- they desire to protect their office. So praise-singing is a good strategy for them. But y not create independent boards to look into recruitments to those offices? This same Constitution makes room for what u may call the winner takes all thereby excluding opposition party members from governance. The result of that is, the opposition then sees nothing good done by d incumbent govt even where the latter is impressive because they feel left out in d governance of the nation. In other countries, after elections, opposition members are genuinely given appointments to help the incumbent dicharge its mandate. Here, such appointments mostly happen when an incumbent wants to get d appointed opposition member to change his/ her party card or loyalty. It is also my view that generally the educated and the affluent alike are more responsible for the more than 50yrs of under-development of our beloved nation! Many of these are the ones that mislead the poor n uneducated. Many of these are the gluttons in our siciety. Many are the political fanatics who are only one-sided n refuse to think out of the box. Many are the ones who dont want others to achieve like them. Ask the law n medical students around. In 2014 we started doing well in business/ investments with more private companies coming in though such development was hardly evident on the lives of ordinary citizens. Yes our country was doing great in road infrastructure. Many roads were being constructed across the country though kick-backs affected the quality of the roads. But it was better than nothing! Recently two of our great mining companies went into liquidation to make d situation more precarious. The mining agreement itself was been questionable ab initio. But Im sure that pretty soon d govt will do something to help d laid-off workers and bring those companies back to their feet(through a bailout or something, I cant tell). And then Ebola surfaced to devour the lives of over 2,000 compatriots. It still continues to claim lives. The economy is almost at its knees. Education has come to an abrupt halt. D socio- religious domains have not gone untouchable! Its about 8mths now, d disease is still ravaging. D reasons common on the lips of our leaders are that d disease is new to d country and that the attidue of oridary SLeoneans keeps ebola thriving. Ive dealt with the latter reason already. For the former, I sometimes ask whether Nigeria for e.g (where the disease has been eradicated) has encountered ebola before now or whether Guinea n Liberia(where d outbreak is subsiding) have known ebola before. Dont u really think that ebola has got its toll on us as a result of poor health infrastructure and lack of strong leadership? Do ordinary SLeoneans trust those leading d fight against ebola? Havent u heard of corrupt practices surrounding d ebola funds? Havent u listened to many SLeoneans say that some people in d fight dont really want to see ebola vanish because they are making money out of it? Lets hope that the New Year will be Ebola free so that our country will rise again and our government will usher in sustainable development! Lets hope that the New Year will be Ebola free so that our country will rise again and our government will usher in sustainable development!
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 08:38:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015