By Kabs Kanu
When United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone, H.E. David Reimer, departs the shores of this country shortly at the completion of his diplomatic duty, he is leaving behind one of the proudest legacies any ambassador worth his salt would love to leave in the host country.
Additionally, Ambassador Reimer is leaving Sierra Leone as one of the marvellous heroes of our beleaguered nation. Though the American ambassador is leaving behind a chaotic, divided and wounded nation, one thing he can sure of is that the plaudits and the blessings of the Sierra Leonean people will accompany him wherever he goes because he is a hero whose name has entered national folklore for standing up boldly, unerringly and conscientiously to the atrocities he observed in Sierra Leone since 2018.
Ambassador Reimer became a Sierra Leonean hero because he stuck his neck out for the people of this country when it mattered most. Throughout his tenure, he exemplified the cherished values of accountability, transparency, respect for human rights and democracy the country he effectively represented held dear to her heart by championing them in favour of an oppressed nation that had fallen into the hands of MAADA BIO, the most bloody human rights abuser and the most undemocratic and loathsome tyrant this country has seen at State House since it gained Independence from Britain in 1961.
Ambassador Reimer, along with the British High Commissioner, Lisa Chesney, the European Union ( EU ) Ambassador Manuel Muller and the United Nations Representative , Babatunde A. Ahonsi constituted themselves into a loud, outspoken team of human rights and democracy advocates who have from time to time called President Maada Bio to account for his terrible human rights abuses and gross disrespect for democracy, constitutional governance and the Rule of Law.
Ambassador Reimer went over and beyond not only to question the validity of the June 24 elections but to shock MAADA BIO into reality that he will not be allowed to get away with stealing the mandate of Sierra Leonean voters by granting Radio Democracy 98.1 an epic tell-all interview that the Bio government blocked the radio from airing, but was leaked in the social media, anyway. In that interview, Ambassador hid nothing from the people of SIERRA LEONE. He boldly announced that the U.S. Government was examining government-to-government programs between the U.S and Sierra Leone and suspending the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact grant worth four hundred million dollars.
Thanks largely to the ethical stand taken by her ambassador in a wilderness of human rights abuses and violations of the tenets of democracy, the U.S Government has moved the needle and imposed a comprehensive visa ban on all the state and non-state actors responsible for and complicit in rigging the June 24 elections and committing human rights abuses in Sierra Leone.
In so doing, Ambassador Reimer and the United States have breathed fresh hopes in the Sierra Leonean people that all is not lost yet in their country, as they thought when it initially appeared that MAADA BIO would shed innocent blood, sack the national treasury and steal any elections he wants and nothing will come out of it. Now, the Ambassador and the U S have driven Bio to understand that he is subject and accountable to the higher powers of moral international authority in our globalized world. Bio now knows also that to continue on the anti-people path he has chosen for himself will not bode well for him and collaborators, with the shadows of the International Criminal Court (ICC) now encircling his wagon.
However long it takes, sanity will return to Sierra Leone and the culprits who abused human rights and democracy will face Justice —-all because AMERICA sent to Sierra Leone an ambassador who had the interest of the people at heart and who cherished the values that make the U.S the greatest nation on the earth.
