By Tejan Mansaray and Jessica Youngblood
Andrew Keili, writing under the Column: ‘Ponder My Thoughts’, has made a name for himself for his excellent writing skills characterised by interesting anecdotes and research based facts which have consistently enriched his articles and endeared him to his audience. His commentaries have, in many cases, stood out to be unbiased and above board. But his recent article titled: “Counting The Cost: SLPP’S Corona VS APC’S Ebola”; defies that admirable Andrew Keili way of writing. Besides its awkwardness, the title itself appears to be so PANDERING TO THE GALLERY to the point that Keili himself felt obliged to start off with an appeal to readers to allow him to explain himself. “Hold your horses and spare me a second to explain…”., writes Keili. But following the slack explanation of his needless sensationalism in the caption, was in fact a bigger surprise – giving commendations where they do not belong and trying to spite the previous government’s efforts at the early stages of that very unknown Ebola disease.
“Truth be told” he asserts, “the government’s handling of the situation thus far has been commendable; President Bio and his government are not oblivious of the untimely prescriptions for Ebola and the many missed opportunities we had of nipping things in the bud”.
For starters, the two situations are definitely not the same and so it is complete hogwash, to compare a response to a disease that ravaged us for two years with one whose ‘inevitability to land’ hasn’t yet manifested. It reads here like he’s bending over backwards to please, and I wonder why.
This government’s response is so worthy of Keili’s praise that by his own admission there have been only a few glitches so far. Yet, the glitch he mentions is in fact their only response so far: their first attempt at quarantine, without a single case yet reported, is a complete catastrophe. For a country that has supposedly learnt from its past, it beggars belief that up to now no serious pronouncement has been made, just wishes of crisis as an excuse for failure to deliver. Therefore to say the response has been commendable so far is pandering of the worst kind.
Not everything is slanted though; the one truth in the article is that ‘Sierra Leone’s prospects before the Ebola outbreak were bright’. But again he’s citing a 40% food price hike in Kenema during the Ebola crisis without pointing out to the fact that food prices have doubled in the last two years in the absence of a pandemic. So imagine going into a potential crisis now when the economy is already on its knees. Did I say knees? I meant butt.
And what appears most disingenuous is this continuous praise of Bio for being ‘inclusive’. If only he had actually taken a national stance two years ago, by now he would not have to manufacture cohesion, he would have a million people ready to serve. For him to make a move by calling on statesmen when ‘ting don cam pan cam’ and have supposedly intelligent people clapping from the sidelines instead of feeding him the truth, is a mockery to our nation.
This confirms the observation, during Ebola, of Hon. Isata Kabia, (erstwhile Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation) that: “Ebola wasn’t the disease, it was just a symptom of it. The real disease in Sierra Leone is dishonesty
