By Ansumana Juana
Unfolding unpalatable campaign violence directed at opposition supporters mostly in the south and southeast occasioned by state security forces is reportedly winning sympathy for main opposition APC party.
Indications from Sierra Leoneans who are being intimidated, harassed and molested by state security forces and hired henchmen at the behest of the ruling SLPP are saying that they will rather die than cast their votes for the SLPP and President Julius Maada Bio in the June 24 elections.
These Sierra Leoneans who have suffered the brunt of SLPP sponsored intimidations, harassments, beatings and woundings and could not get justice say, they see no reason to vote for President Maada Bio to get a second term because according to them, they have not seen or felt anything done by the SLPP in the last five years that has changed their lives since in 2018.
“I feel ashamed and dejected for having casted my votes for the SLPP and Julius Maada Bio in the 2018 election. We were fooled by their fabulous campaign promises one of which suggested that they will transform the country’s economy in six months,” Aminata Fayiah noted, pointing out that instead, “the economy, the bread and butter issue which they placed emphasis on, slipped through their hands at the very unset of their being in power and the economy just turned upside-down with no end in sight as to how they can fix it.”
Miss Massaquoi, who revealed that she was a staunch SLPP supporter, stated that President Bio and his former so-called economic expert, Jacob Jusu Saffa and other hustlers from the Diaspora, have “just been swindling and squandering the country’s Leones exchanging it to US Dollars from the Central Bank and transferring same to their families abroad.”
She therefore swore to her mother’s breast milk she sucked some 22 years ago that she will never vote for the SLPP again in her life. “They have proved to be incompetent to run the country and also, they are just in government to ruin the country,” Miss Massaquoi further pointed out.
In Kono District where Julius Maada Bio and his charlatan wife, Fatima Jabbie have visited approximately twenty times, Tamba Unisa says the President and his wife and entourage have been going to Kono, to distribute money and make “false pretext promises.” Tamba says since Maada Bio started going to Kono with his “fake and unrealistic promises” the people of Kono District have seen the desperation in him for a second term and as such, he disclosed, “the people decided to dance with him, shout in agreement with his lies and falsehoods against the opposition APC party and eat the booty they are giving to us.”
Tamba revealed that non of the projects he has launched during his campaign trips to the district has kicked off. The road projects to Toli and Sowa Chiefdoms through Fiama Chiefdom are as dead as wood. He explained that since the demonstration by the contractors on the day of their launch, they have left their rugged roads with thick mud and with rains now pouring, those roads have become death traps.
The Kono University of Science and Technology is still in its skeletal sketch on paper with nothing absolutely being done on the infrastructure.
But according to Madam Mary Pettiquoi, the question is: how can Kono Matter to President Bio at the nick of his exit from power and when they have finished swindling the country’s economy?
Madam Pettiquoi pointed out that the people of Kono District are no longer fools to be fooled by lying politicians. She maintained that the APC party since independence, has been the only political establishment that has Kono District and its people at heart. He recalled that every APC government since the return of democracy in 1996 has recognized Kono people with appointments and socioeconomic development programmes. “The people of Kono will never fall for the empty and fake promises of the SLPP again,” she stressed and ended with the phrase: “enough is enough”.
A political observer who spoke to this writer on anonymity stated that the SLPP is in “dire straits” with their chances of winning the June 24 elections as thin as a thread. He said President Bio and his SLPP had since missed the opportunity of winning a second term on almost “a silver platter” had they not came into governance with vengeance and vendetta against the opposition.
“They lost precious good times to concentrate on fixing issues pertinent to their compatriots by focusing on the opposition with the aim of scapegoating them for their inertia to move the country forward,” the Observer pointed out.
According to him, giving all the huge disclosures of financial impropriety and apparent thieving by state officials, the blatant use of state security forces against the opposition, the hugely recorded human rights violations and abuses, the extra judicial killings at Pademba Road Male Correctional Center, in Makeni, in Tombo and the cold blooded killings associated with the August 10 protests, the apparent manipulation of democratic institutions; the ECSL, the PPRC and mostly all of the civil society organizations in the country, the people will want a change of government to at least give them respite and peace.
He concluded therefore that incumbent President Bio and his SLPP will barely score 35% votes most of which he maintains, will come from the south and southeast where the SLPP has seriously put fear in the hearts and minds of their mainly Mende ethnic kiths and kins.
