Boss Momodou,
That letter was addressed to him, not to you!
By the way I just wrote this right now, to LEONENET, and guess what? YOU are in it!
:
Karamoh,
”Small ting”: Did you watch Sorious Samura’s programme about Sierra Leone, on CNN last night?
http://www.insightnewstv.com/
There is very little room for euphoria, given the very grim nature of reality on the Salone political landscape. Nothing should be taken for granted. This was learned from Neil Kinnock who was already cruising around in a pre-PM limousine before ballot-casting day, and that love’s Labour lost, is still one of the unclarified mysteries but the lesson remains, even for PMDC: Don’t count your chickens before your hens get laid – or if you and Ed Smith (the chickens’ doctor) prefer the more regular Westminster version” Don't count your chickens before your eggs hatch.”
PMDC is resting one the given assurance that the general ill wind of discontent that is blowing through the country is giving more wind to the PMDC- APC sails.
Indeed there is much substance to our disappointments, about the last of these disappointments ( to put it mildly) I’m not saying that there is a lack of causal connection in the popular imagination; I’m merely stating a sequence of events: Chief Samuel Hinga Norman declared for the PMDC after a successful and from a medical point of view, rather routine operation from which he was reported to be recovering beautifully and according to all medical expectations. Shortly after declaring for the PMDC, the Chief was reported dead.
Now giving more velocity to the ill wind, when Mr. Kabbah ( who should know better, even if he is trying to win the votes of a more ignorant electorate) when this man , lying through his teeth, or perhaps not lying like the lawyer and political survivor of the Beoku-Betts Commission of Inquiry that found him wanting in uprightness, and this is from sierra Leone’s presidential website: “President Kabbah explained that the hip replacement operation Chief Norman went through was a very risky operation, and several other people like Chief Norman have been unlucky to survive such an operation even in Europe.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. A hip replacement operation (as JLM’s link had made clear) is not “a risky operation” My brother-in-law had one and is still quite hale even if considerably less hearty. Harvey (our African American brother, friend and mentor of many) had one and still mounts those long steps to his Artist studio at the top of Stockholm city – my son and I visited him twice after his hospitalisation – last year, with flowers for such a beauty-ful man he is. I visit him regularly.
When last did Mr. Kabbah visit Chief Hinga Norman? Fortunately there will be no one to cry political crocodile tears at his grave.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Harvey+Cropper&btnG=Google+Search
I’d like to point this out Karamoh: that PMDC and opposition do not relax their efforts working at the grass roots level. I observe that with the Gambia too, there is a highly vocal opposition element domiciled in the Diaspora who may be prone to equating their own informed discontent with the mood for change that can be expressed through the ballot box. If anything, that mood in the Gambia was reflected in voter apathy in the last election in which Jammeh won with a landslide of 67.23%. (The apathetic do not even bother to vote against. I’m sending Momodou Sidibeh’s excellent and original analysis of a fragmented and demoralising Gambian opposition in disarray, to our JLM to see if he can learn and invest the derived wisdom into the Sierra Leone political process.
http://www.gambia.dk/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3100
I also promised Momodou (on the phone last night) to send him some links to John Lansana Musa, our own able political analyst and commentator of Sierra Leone affairs, for Momodou to likewise benefit from our experiences, not so far away.
In common, we need strong oppositions, so that our multi-party system does not de facto degenerate into O One-Party statehood because of a malfunctioning opposition. . Imagine if George Bush did not have any Democrat rivals, you’d only have AKB c talking briefly and more lengthily in his own books, about kunumunu tontoism.
Getting to the grass roots level means that in every village and little community the opposition parties also have representatives who are securing their interests. On the whole the intelligentsia will tend to vote on issues that transcend ethnic loyalties. The Diaspora intelligentsia must not sit on their laurels and expect this discontent to be channelled – un guided - into the opposition ballot boxes, when you have the immoral John Ernest Leigh dictum and advice to” his supporters”( before the SLPP Makeni Conbention) to ” take their money but vote for your conscience”. Problem is that many a conscience (and loyalty) is compromised, by ”taking” the said money.
The popularity or unpopularity of an incumbent government cannot be gauged by the UNPD parameters – at least not with an equal certainty as to how that electorate, enflamed by discontent is likely to vote, even given a clear alternative. Your assumption is that a general atmosphere of discontent and disappointment with government performance will drive the aggrieved populace into the rams of the opposition – especially through your lengthy words reaching them all the way from USA and Diaspora.
Professor Tunde Zack-Williams has spoken of the role of the NGO in many communities. When people start dispensing with / bypassing government altogether and start looking up to NGOs to supply their needs, you probably have a mini states within the states. I should have thought that back home in Sierra Leone, most people would see NGOs as part of Government. Sitting where you are in Potomac ( ohporto Mac?) it must be equally difficult for you to assess the situation from there.
I sincerely hope that this transparent piece of his personal communication does not in any way jeopardise his standing with us all:
” I have now returned from Freetown, during which
I gave my first lecture to Sa Leonean students. They were no different from
the British, Nigerian,German & Us students that I had spoken to. Well
informed about the situation in Sierra Leone and Africa, though they are
working under impossible conditions. I also took some books for FBC library,
including two that I published last year.I received a nice letter from the
Ag Librarian and as a result I am organising a large shipment from our
journal (Review of African Political Economy) to Freetown.
Cornelius, the question you pose is one that I have been battling with for a
number of years now and it is one that I tried to address in two chapters in
a recently co-edited book with Ola Uduku (Africa Beyond the Post Colonial,
Ashgate 2004). I tried to draw attention to the need for us to turn the
brain drain into a brain gain. The question of the African state is one that
troubles me too and I also co-edited a collection with a colleague at the
Open University (the Politics of Transition in Africa). I may be naive, but
I do believe that without the developmental state we are doomed to
stagnation. I strongly question the proliferation of INGOs which seem not
only to be displacing the African state in a chaotic and unorganised way,
but also seem to constitute themselves as civil society.”
My wife’s Literary Club ladies are due in half an hour, so I have to finish up here, and be gone!
I’d like to take a closer look at that literary document of ” SECRET LOVE LETTER INTERCEPTED” and -A CKC BOY'S RETORT
>
> From: Momodou S Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 2007/03/05 må PM 03:57:50 CET
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Ämne: SV: When one door is closed, the other is open.
>
> Your Highness C. E. Hamelberg,
>
> With all the royal Sierra Leonean jokes aside, I would advise you to link
> with Mr. Camara privately and sort out this misunderstanding.
>
> I am sure you both meant well. Was the spring this year not a bit too early?
>
> Cheers,
> SidibehKunda
>
>
> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] För Cornelius Edward Hamelberg
> Skickat: den 5 mars 2007 14:42
> Till: [log in to unmask]
> Ämne: Re: When one door is closed, the other is open.
>
> Momodou,
>
> In my heart of hearts I ask you to forgive me whatever it is that I have
> done wrong and offended you.
>
> It is never my intention to wrong you, to do wrong to you, to do you or
> yours any thing wrong or harmful or detrimental to your health, happiness or
> freedom.
>
> As human beings we have in have in common the sovereignty of the Almighty
> and our efforts to serve Him is the purpose of our lives here on this
> planet.
>
> Spring started yesterday in Stockholm. I hope that the birds will soon be
> flying back to Green Land.
>
> Wa salaam,
>
> Cornelius
>
> ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
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