Subject: shekito
From: tolongbo
To: All
Date Posted: 08:02:06 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
The Patriotic Vanguard, Sierra Leone News Portal|
Vanguard man for State House
Sheka Tarawalie,one of the Patriotic Vanguard’s UK correspondents currently based in Manchester, UK, is on his way to Freetown to take up the position of Press Officer at State House, according to usually reliable sources.
The Patriotic Vanguard has learnt that President Ernest Bai Koroma himself made the offer to the exiled journalist and that Shekito accordingly accepted the offer via telephone conversation.
State House sources state that the offer is in recognition of the former Torchlight newspaper editor’s courageous journalism both at home and abroad in Sierra Leonean matters.
“Yes, Shekito is on his way here. We believe he can make a difference in handling presidential press matters,” an official at the Ministry of Presidential Affairs affirmed.
Shekito, one of Sierra Leone’s finest journalists,could not be reached as we went to press, but authoritative family sources in the UK, present during the conversation, confirm that the offer was made and accepted.
The official announcement is expected in the next few days. Stay tuned.
Subject: What Anthony Sisay needs to know about Moinina's Posting
From: Mensa
To: All
Date Posted: 07:58:55 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: unikad5@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 82.99.234.240
Message:
When Anthony Sisay wrote: "We don’t need any preacher on this forum," you wonder whether the name Kabs-Kanu rings a bell. Well, I will be the first to advocate for the title 'Rev.' to be added to his log-in name! It could help a lot of folks in this forum.
Well now Mr. Sisay, you seem to have lost the prudent motive behind the posting, and perhaps, along the same line of thought, you must have lost your sense of righteousness. It wouldn't surprise netters to realize that, those who promptly pounce on negative arguments whenever the issue of God is brought to the fore, are those that have a high level of deficiency in their spiritual link with the Almighty.
From the look of things, you might do with some education in the subject. If the posting shed light on some of the reactionary calamities that befell miscreants who rebelled against God, then the underlining motive is to warn. This does not necessarily imply that all those who suffer calamities have angered God. God have so many ways of showing his might, and what may appear so much appallingly sinister to you because you lack the in-depth of faith, may not look so bad to the Almighty. The bottom line is, death is inevitable, no matter what other interpretations we might attach to the cause of death.
And again, many a times, issues of non-relevance to national development, religion and morality attractively pervade this forum and subsequently burn productive time, but they don't provoke the same magnitude of condemnation as yours in this subject.
Now that our country is in a transition of profound dimension, we need sermons of providence and morality to complement the new dawn that the exasperated citizenry of Sierra Leone clung to. The role of religion cannot be downplayed in a country's developmental agenda. Just like health, religion is like food for our soul...our conscience.
People belabor themselves in the subject of corruption, but religion has the most comprehensive solution to a country's development because it attacks the 'nucleus' of mankind …. 'The Heart and Mind' A leader with a Godly conscience doesn't need to be threatened by a commission of enquiry! he simply surrenders to the natural attributes of honesty and courage. Corruption can never be a tradition in any society because traditions die hard. But attitudes only tend to be entrenched, that's why, with the right formula, they can be modified or even uprooted.
Africa may be backward in material development, but the continent far outweighs the west in morality and righteousness. A typical western society of today is fraught with all sorts of sexual escapades, dastardly behavior bordering on nude dressing and illicit sex, crumbling family values, and littered with divorces. The day-to-day rumours filtering from the US about Sierra Leoneans snatching the wives of their fellow Sierra Leoneans is not in our Sierra Leone culture.
The American lawmakers were outrightly inadequate by making laws that give emotional women the right to call the shots.
To crown it all, we need sermons from time to time to bring us back to the path of righteousness, because temptations come in multitude of vices in our time.
Subject: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: TIPOTEH
To: All
Date Posted: 04:18:24 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host81-159-184-207.range81-159.btcentralplus.com at 81.159.184.207
Message:
People are debating whether those wuth Masters and PHD are more intelligent that those with certificates or first degrees. What sayeth you?
Subject: Re: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: BRA ENVIABLE
To: All
Date Posted: 07:54:40 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
I now know that my primary school teachers were mostly TC holders. Being a little boy, I did not know that and for Heaven's sake, there was no need to know their levels of education. They instilled in me every educational component I needed as a little boy. Then, as now, my TC-holding primary school teachers remain some of the most intelligent educators in my life.
I think intelligence is a natural quality given to man by God. An advanced degree simply edifies a man's level of intelligence by {supposedly} adding style and sophistication to the mind's ability to perceive and analyze. Since intelligence is God-given, a less brainy individual may get a PHD, but his academic intelligence can only be average at best. Apparently, that explains why a brainy holder of a Master's degree can exude far more academic intelligence than the holder of a PHD with average intelligence. On the other hand, a brainy PHD holder will sparkle with so much literariness that onlookers can only wish they possessed a mere fraction of his versatility.
I love PHD degrees for academic reasons, not for a show of extreme intelligence. Your job as a lecturer is safer when a PHD stands behind your resume. I can surely see myself spending retirement as an FBC teacher. That, of course, is only a thought. The road stretches far ahead, and many careers can become a possibility on this interminably long road.
Subject: Re: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: Jan
To: All
Date Posted: 06:45:58 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 86.157.114.201
Message:
Certainly not although it adds title to your name. Some people deliberately chose not to go for additional title. A good number of people born in the UK would not bother with any. In fact most firms would prefer to teach you the job. Once you are good at it, the sky could be your limit. The Prime Minister of the UK prior to Mrs Thatcher was educated up to secondary school level. A good number of the UK Politicians do not have a degree but they have the intelligence to be in politics and even represent their members to a higher standard.
We should not forget that some people are less fortunate to be able to pursue a post graduate course.
It is now time for Sierra Leoneans to stop disrespecting those with lower qualifications. The fact that one has a first degree or equivalent also shows that he/she is capable of getting a post-graduate qualification.
A lot of Phd/Masters holders have contributed a lot to the downfall of our economy.
Subject: Re: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: Faundu
To: All
Date Posted: 07:10:43 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host81-159-184-207.range81-159.btcentralplus.com at 81.159.184.207
Message:
I agree with you Jan. I would say this with no shame. I have already got my Masters degree, but the a job that I know is below my qualification. Yes, it is good to have these degress, but it is also important that we do courses that attract secured jobs.
Subject: Re: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 04:47:15 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: youngstudent08@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
no it doesnt make you great but it adds a stature to you and if you go to a great program like Upenn, standford or cambridge it gives you an advantage in regards to big money jobs? but inregards to intelligence its a lot of brothers and sisters that are very intelligent but could not go for there masters or phd like some of us. we shoudl not look down on others for what degree they have but for the substance they bring to the table.
Subject: Re: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: TIPOTEH
To: All
Date Posted: 05:08:08 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host81-159-184-207.range81-159.btcentralplus.com at 81.159.184.207
Message:
'The substance they bring'. You have got it right young thinker, ma meh. Shakespeare never had a degree, but that f***ing meh kan write
Subject: Re: DOES A MASTERS OR PHD DEGREE MAKES YOU GREAT
From: Moris
To: All
Date Posted: 05:34:03 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host81-159-184-207.range81-159.btcentralplus.com at 81.159.184.207
Message:
Yeah, just like that little boy of Bethlehem..er..er.was' da meh name again...Masa Jesus. The way da meh belittle all those wise men...Lord God Christ. No degree, but intelligent.
Subject: Are these Interesting Fact?
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 03:37:51 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.153
Message:
DID YOU KNOW THESE FACTS?
I SURE DIDN'T TILL NOW
Death is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death!
Make a personal reflection about this.....
Very interesting, read until the end.....
It is written in the Bible (Galatians 6:7):
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
Here are some men and women
who mocked God:
John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
"Christianity will end, it will disappear.
I do not have to argue about
that. I am certain.
Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him" (1966).
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.
Tancredo Neves (President of Brazil):
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency.
Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died.
Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):
During A show in Canecio (Rio de Janeiro),
while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: "God, that's for you."
He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.
The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said:
"Not even God can sink it"
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.
Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show.
He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.
After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
"I don't need your Jesus".
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment.
Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang:
"Don't stop me, I'm going down all the way, down the highway to hell".
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit.
Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas, Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend.......
The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:
"My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You.."
She responded: "Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, Cause Inside Here.....It's Already Full"
Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died,
the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact.
The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none was broken.
Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist and entertainer) said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle.
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus.
Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive.
"Jesus"
P.S: If it was a joke, you would have sent it to everyone. So are you going to have courage to send this?.
I have done my part, Jesus said
"If you are embarrassed about me,
I will also be embarrassed about you before my father."
You are my 8 in 8 seconds. I am not breaking this. No way!
I'M TOLD THIS WORKS!!!!! Bishop T.D. Jakes "8 Second Prayer." Just repeat this prayer and see how God moves!!
"Lord, I love you and I need you, come into my heart, and bless me, my family, my home, and my friends, in Jesus' name. Amen."
Pass this message to 8 people {EXCEPT YOU AND ME}. You will receive a miracle tomorrow. I Hope that you don't ignore and let God bless you.
Subject: Re: Are these Interesting Fact?
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 05:09:55 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: anthonysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 218.189.231.87
Message:
Albert Moinina,
This is one good piece that you've posted. The only thing missing is that I would have love to know what bad comments or remarks the people in Niger made against God that could have handed them such a massive punishment of hunger and starvation to the point that you could count their ribs even when they are alive.
What about the locust that plagued the sub-Saharan African continent recently, who messed up with God?
Or the super-starvation backed by super inflation in Zimbabwe, who is the culprit?
The Tsunami that hit Indonesia that killed scores of people, who are the people that misbehaved?
Why can't wicked leaders in Africa just disappear?
Look my friend, only fools will think that God does not exist, but to associate any of those things that you craftily and tactfully listed as the act of God is a big joke--they where just massive coincident.
Do you know why? Jesus never took aggressive actions against anybody when he was living "in person." Otherwise he should have flushed all the Islamic terrorists out of sight. Bush doesnˇ¦t have to chase them all over the place.
Please reframe from this sort of postings they can mess up the weak minded. We donˇ¦t need any preacher on this forum. For too long weˇ¦ve been brain washed about religion and up till now Africans are still adamant about Jesus and Mohammed, but did any one of them left their foot prints in SL?
There was a recent documentary about, spiritual worships, voodoo, in Africa and South America. Some South Americans are still practicing it to this day. In fact there was some particular South American Christian who claimed that the voodoo religion is giving him what ever he asked for. Others claimed that the voodooˇ¦s practice is similar to that of Christianity in the sense that both believed in the use of blood as spiritual means of reaching their gods.
Others claimed that voodoo was deliberately black mailed by American propaganda and this could be the reason why you and me are probably not voodoo worshippers today.
So, my advice is that, we all have one God, but let us try and identify our mediator. Could it be Mandela? Or Desmond Tutu?
Subject: Re: Are these Interesting Fact?
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 06:07:04 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.153
Message:
Mr. Sisay,
Please reconcile the two statement of yours:
"This is one good piece that you've posted"
and
"Please reframe from this sort of postings they can mess up the weak minded."
It is a fact that bad things happen to good people and the opposite being similarly true. The reason, I do not know. One thing I know from the Bible is that ALL THINGS HAPPEN FOR OUR GOOD.
As to the sufferings of Africans, there are many dimensions. Without a doubt there is some spiritual dimension to it, but I dare not play God and pinpoint one individual or groups of people.
I hope you have enjoyed the piece which was sent to me by a friend and makes you reflect on your standing with the Lord. Be sure at least to be becareful with your utterances against your Maker, the Almighty God.
Take care.
Subject: Re: Are these Interesting Fact?
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 06:27:01 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: anthonysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 218.189.231.87
Message:
Are you mistaking Jesus, for the Almighty God? You be careful, because this could be the worst sin that most people are committing without realizing it: THOU SHALT NOT WORSHIP ANY OTHER GOD BESIDES ME.
THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD AND ONLY ONE SHALL IT BE.
Subject: Re: Are these Interesting Fact?
From: UK5
To: All
Date Posted: 03:58:04 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: unikad5@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 213.217.51.87
Message:
Very refreshing to read. A beautiful lecture about life, death and morality.
Subject: About EBK from BBC
From: Stingray
To: All
Date Posted: 00:25:08 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: unikad5@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 82.99.234.160
Message:
Parts of this spectacularly sited coastal capital, set along the edges of a mountainous peninsula, have been transformed in the six years since the end of the civil war in 2001.
Sierra Leone is one of the world's poorest countries
The buildings and factories that have gone up since hostilities ended show the potential for Sierra Leone.
But all the expectation will come to nothing if President Ernest Bai Koroma fails to address the rampant corruption and mismanagement.
President Koroma told me his policy on corruption was clear.
"I have sent out clear warnings to everybody, including members of my government, and I believe that in the next 36 months Sierra Leoneans will start seeing the turnaround."
Gates go up
In the neighbourhood of Godrich, on the outskirts of Freetown, teeming building sites are emerging from the swamps and mountainsides.
During the decade-long civil war this area was reduced to little more than a slum.
Now, an international company has built a modern brick factory in Godrich to cope with booming demand for building materials.
The same company is near to completing a gated estate of beachside luxury houses.
The "peace dividend" of development is there for all to see.
The new buildings show there are people with money to spend in Sierra Leone and the confidence they are making a safe investment.
But those outside the gated estate, or in other parts of Freetown, could be living in another country: day-labourers breaking rocks by hand and children in rags, darting in and out of open sewers next to their tin-shack homes.
Road signs
Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world. The rich and the poor live side by side.
President Koroma won a tightly fought election
Godrich is still a rough and ready place with a potholed earth track running through it.
There are rumours that the road could soon be tarmacked - not least because President Koroma has his private residence in Godrich.
If the road is completed soon it could mean either that infrastructure work is advancing smoothly - which would of course be a good thing - or that Mr Koroma has used his presidential clout to improve a road near his own personal house.
That could be a signal to some Sierra Leoneans that despite all his talk of transparency and incorruptibility, he is not much different from the rest of the political class here.
Most Sierra Leoneans distrust politicians so much because of their track record as a group, that it is quite possible this latter interpretation will prevail even if the rebuilding of the Godrich road was scheduled before Mr Koroma came to power.
At his inauguration last week in the national sports stadium, President Koroma did several laps of honour in an open-topped car.
He was grinning broadly and waving his trademark white handkerchief - a handkerchief that he sorely needed to wipe away perspiration in the boiling heat of the packed stadium.
Massive corruption
In his inaugural speech President Koroma said: "I exercise zero tolerance towards corruption."
He spoke of changing "attitudes" - in other words the mentality and culture of corruption that are so deeply ingrained in Sierra Leonean society.
It is a massive job.
Corruption in Sierra Leone extends all the way from top officials taking kickbacks on government contracts to teachers telling children they have to pay if they want to go to class.
Rules and regulations may change. President Koroma told me, for example, that he would be making the anti-corruption commission completely independent of government.
But changing a whole culture is a challenge of a far greater order.
Everything may depend on the lead given by President Koroma and his team.
There are some signs in the top appointments he has made.
Respected team
The new head of the anti-corruption commission, Abdul Tejan Cole, is a lawyer who has a reputation for strict probity.
Sierra Leone's people are more used to corrupt government
"He's just incorruptible," says a close observer.
It is said that when Mr Cole was a lecturer in law at Freetown's Fourah Bay College, he was confronted with the task of marking an exam paper written by a younger member of his own family.
He is reported to have said he could not mark the paper because it might compromise his position.
The new Foreign Minister, Zainab Bangura, also has a track record of campaigning against corruption.
Before she entered politics, she was the head of the respected Sierra Leonean pressure group, The Campaign for Good Governance.
Mrs Bangura held a senior position in the United Nations peacekeeping operation in neighbouring Liberia before President Koroma asked her to be Sierra Leone's foreign minister - to her complete surprise.
On probation
A senior adviser to President Koroma, speaking on condition of anonymity, says: "The new team will be on probation to see how they perform."
In fact, it may be the other way around.
Some of the new ministers could, if they wanted, have careers and prospects outside Sierra Leone.
The new finance minister is a successful economist and the new defence minister spent a long time working in Britain.
It may be that the new top team in Freetown has put President Koroma on probation - to see how he performs and whether it is worth them sticking around in the sometimes murky world of Sierra Leonean politics.
Subject: MY MUSLIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS,PLEASE,GO TO MECCA.
From: ALPHA SAIDU BANGURA
To: All
Date Posted: 22:53:24 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: SAIDUBANGSO@AOL.COM
Entered From: c-76-111-98-183.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.111.98.183
Message:
It is now time for Muslims the world over to perform the Hajj in the holy land of Mecca.
Muslims are mandated to perform the Hajj for the following reasons:
(1) To affirm and confirm they faith in the Almighty Allah.
(2) To knowledge their transgressions and ask God for his forgiveness.
The Almighty Allah assures Muslims(people who totally submit themselves to the will of God) that he will forgive all their sins after they preformed the Hajj.
I pray that God will accept the Hajj of all Muslims going to mecca this year.
I pray that when my Muslim brothers and sisters return from Hajj they will remain clean and holy forever.Amen.
My brothers and sisters in Islam, it will make no sense for you to come back from Hajj and act like Alhaji Mohamed Alieu Iscandari( who performed the Hajj in 1998, only to come back and continued smoking weed and drinking alcohol).
If going to Hajj does not reform you to a Godly person, there will be nothing else that will refrom you in this world.
YAAA-AYYU-HAL-LAZIINA AAMANUD-KHULUU FIS -SILMI KAAAFFAH,
WA LAA TATTABI-UUKHUTUWAATISH-SHAY-TAAN.
INNAH-UU LAKUM ADUW-WUM-MUBIIN.
MEANING-
O YE WHO BELIEVE! ENTER INTO ISLAM WHOLE-HEARTEDLY;
AND FOLLOW NOT THE FOOTSTEPS OF SATAN FOR HE IS TO YOU
AN AVOWED ENEMY.
Subject: Under What Circumstances Might a Country Devalue?
From: Currency Devaluation and Revaluation
To: All
Date Posted: 22:27:59 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
When a government devalues its currency, it is often because the interaction of market forces and policy decisions has made the currency's fixed exchange rate untenable. In order to sustain a fixed exchange rate, a country must have sufficient foreign exchange reserves, often dollars, and be willing to spend them, to purchase all offers of its currency at the established exchange rate. When a country is unable or unwilling to do so, then it must devalue its currency to a level that it is able and willing to support with its foreign exchange reserves.
A key effect of devaluation is that it makes the domestic currency cheaper relative to other currencies. There are two implications of a devaluation. First, devaluation makes the country's exports relatively less expensive for foreigners. Second, the devaluation makes foreign products relatively more expensive for domestic consumers, thus discouraging imports. This may help to increase the country's exports and decrease imports, and may therefore help to reduce the current account deficit.
There are other policy issues that might lead a country to change its fixed exchange rate. For example, rather than implementing unpopular fiscal spending policies, a government might try to use devaluation to boost aggregate demand in the economy in an effort to fight unemployment. Revaluation, which makes a currency more expensive, might be undertaken in an effort to reduce a current account surplus, where exports exceed imports, or to attempt to contain inflationary pressures.
Effects of Devaluation
A significant danger is that by increasing the price of imports and stimulating greater demand for domestic products, devaluation can aggravate inflation. If this happens, the government may have to raise interest rates to control inflation, but at the cost of slower economic growth.
Another risk of devaluation is psychological. To the extent that devaluation is viewed as a sign of economic weakness, the creditworthiness of the nation may be jeopardized. Thus, devaluation may dampen investor confidence in the country's economy and hurt the country's ability to secure foreign investment.
Another possible consequence is a round of successive devaluations. For instance, trading partners may become concerned that a devaluation might negatively affect their own export industries. Neighboring countries might devalue their own currencies to offset the effects of their trading partner's devaluation. Such "beggar thy neighbor" policies tend to exacerbate economic difficulties by creating instability in broader financial markets.
Since the 1930s, various international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been established to help nations coordinate their trade and foreign exchange policies and thereby avoid successive rounds of devaluation and retaliation. The 1976 revision of Article IV of the IMF charter encourages policymakers to avoid "manipulating exchange rates...to gain an unfair competitive advantage over other members." With this revision, the IMF also set forth each member nation's right to freely choose an exchange rate system.
Subject: Re: Under What Circumstances Might a Country Devalue?
From: Economist
To: All
Date Posted: 04:51:24 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Unfortunately, you have copied the textbook descritption of how devaluation works in a developed (western) country. What you don't understand (since you post it in the context of a discussion on Salone), is that Salone is NOT a developed country. Therefore, while devaluation works well in western or advanced developing countries, it fails miserably in a developing economy like Saone.
So, it is a major mistake to apply devaluation in Salone. Instead of doing what devaluation does in a developed country -- bring the country's imports and other foreign expenditure into balance with export and other foreign revenues, it produces only escalating inflation, unemployment, declining incomes, idle factories and other businesses, and even more inflation as the vicious cycle of poverty grips the unfortunate developing country that devalued its currency. This is what happened to Salone after the IMF insisted that the Salone govt. devalue the Leone in 1979.
This is why the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made a major blunder -- if it was indeed a mistake, not a deliberate fraud to transfer Salone's resources to Western countries -- by demanding that the APC government of Bandele Stevens devalue the strong Leone in 1979.
Here are specific examples of your major mistakes which echo the IMF's own mistakes in Salone:
You wrote: "When a government devalues its currency, it is often because the interaction of market forces and policy decisions has made the currency's fixed exchange rate untenable."
1. That is not true in the case of Sierra Leone's 1979 devaluation. It was the policy decision -- a mere announcement by the Salone government -- that created the devaluation -- not the other way round, as you said by mistake.
You also wrote: "In order to sustain a fixed exchange rate, a country must have sufficient foreign exchange reserves, often dollars, and be willing to spend them, to purchase all offers of its currency at the established exchange rate."
2. That is also not true in the case of Sierra Leone on several grounds. First of all, the Leone was PEGGED to the British pound, not to the U.S. dollar. So, it was the British pound, and not dollars, which was the reserve curency for Sierra Leone. Second of all, Sierra Leone's currency was not tradeable. So, it was not possible for Salone "to purchase all offers of its currency at the established exchange rate" because there were no such offers from "all" others. Simply put, there was no market for Salone's currency in other countries because the Leone was not a tradeable international currency.
3. You wrote: "Another possible consequence is a round of successive devaluations. For instance, trading partners may become concerned that a devaluation might negatively affect their own export industries. Neighboring countries might devalue their own currencies to offset the effects of their trading partner's devaluation."
This is again not true for Salone. It is true only for developed countries (and advanced developing countries). Why? Because only countries with similar production capacities in their economies can locally replace goods that used to be supplied by the other country before the devaluation. If a country does not have that production capability when it devalues its currency and make it cheaper to foreigners, it would not have the capacity to replace the other country's now relatively more expensive goods with its own goods.
An example should help you understand this major blunder by the IMF (if it was in fact a mistake and not fraud) in Salone. When the devaluation makes the Leone cheaper in relation to the U.S. dollar, it is now cheaper for Americans to buy Leones. Does that mean that Americans will stop buying suddenly more expensive American cars and instead buy suddenly cheaper Salonean cars? Yes -- if Salone produced cars -- but Salone does NOT produce cars!
So, whereas the devaluation does make the Leone cheaper, it would fail to increase Salone's export of cars for the obvious reason that salone does NOT produce cars! Interestingly, this obvious fact did not appear obvious to the IMF when it made trhe mistake of telling the Salone government to devalue the Leone -- assuming it was a mistake, not fraud on the IMF's part when it insisted that the Sallone government devalue the Leone in 1979.
So, when the IMF insisted that Salone devalue its currency in 1979, it knew -- or should have known, since, similarly to its sister institution, the World Bank, it claims to have the best economists in the world -- that it would not work in Salone, for all the reasons I set forth above. Why then, did the IMF, which, according to you "help[s] nations coordinate their trade and foreign exchange policies and thereby avoid successive rounds of devaluation and retaliation" FAIL to help Salone in 1979, and instead destroyed Salone's economy and thereby impoverished milions of Saloneans?
To find the true answer to that question, and so find out the real motive of the IMF in its inappropriate economic policies in Salone over the past 30 years or so, check out a book written by an American secret seervice agent, John Perkins, who described how Westerns countries carried out a plan to massively loot the resources of developing countries in his book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc).
This is what Perkins confessed in his 2004 book cited above: "Economic hit men (EHM)are highly paid proefessionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know, I was an EHM.""
If the above shocking confession by a Westerner who aided and abetted the World Bank and other Western organzations like the IMF to massively loot resources of developing countries, you have to thank Salone's own Moh'm Jalloh. Why?
Because it was our own Moh'm Jalloh who started saying the exact same thing in his published writings in the We Yone newspaper in Salone in 1979, fully 25 years before the American Perkins confessed and said it to the whole words in 2004!
Subject: Re: Under What Circumstances Might a Country Devalue?
From: Question
To: All
Date Posted: 06:32:54 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-21-126-109.res.east.verizon.net at 70.21.126.109
Message:
If the above shocking confession by a Westerner who aided and abetted the World Bank and other Western organzations like the IMF to massively loot resources of developing countries, you have to thank Salone's own Moh'm Jalloh. Why?
Because it was our own Moh'm Jalloh who started saying the exact same thing in his published writings in the We Yone newspaper in Salone in 1979, fully 25 years before the American Perkins confessed and said it to the whole words in 2004! (Economist)
Economist, ever since I have been reading about Jalloh's writings against devaluation in Sa Lon, one question always remains in the mind. What if Siaka Stevens had listened to Jalloh and told the IMF to go to hell with their devaluation? Would Sa Lon have been a much better place today?
Subject: How to jump ship without other passengers suspecting.
From: The Nationalist
To: All
Date Posted: 20:51:53 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: h167-156-253.63.chubb.com at 167.156.63.253
Message:
www.awarenesstimes.com
Subject: Re: How to jump ship without other passengers suspecting.
From: Ttatalya.
To: All
Date Posted: 21:41:18 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
The website is reporting stories and sews. It does not matter which party, she will report it. I admire her for that. It does not mean that because she is reporting and pointing the good work on APC, therefore she is on her way abandoning SLPP and jumping over to APC. She is just above partisan politics when it comes to journalism. Kudos to her. Nationalist, you are dead wrong.
Subject: For Bambay: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Olu Cole
To: All
Date Posted: 17:30:12 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Bambay, you are quite correct in suggesting that we not only discuss the problems that you correctly stated Moh'm diagnosed almost 30 years in 1979, but the solutions as well.
Check out Moh'm's solution to this 30-year problem that he and another Siera Leonean, Rose, published this past January. I found it on All Africa.com
http://allafrica.com/stories/200701310722.html
The Revaluation of the Country's Currency
Concord Times (Freetown)
OPINION
January 30, 2007
Posted to the web January 31, 2007
By Mohamed A. Jalloh and Jonathan M. Rose
Freetown
Recently, the British government's international development agency, DFID, invited Sierra Leoneans resident abroad to comment on its proposed strategy for our country's development for the next five years.
The following article is based on the response of two Sierra Leonean professionals based in the USA. It is part of a comprehensive proposal urging a change in the strategy underlying foreign aid policies by Britain and other members of the international community that will be jointly submitted to DFID by the following Sierra Leonean groups based in the USA: The Sierra Leone Network, Youths for Sierra Leone Improvement, Young Leaders -- Sierra Leone, and the premier S/Leonean discussion forum on the Internet, SALONE Discussion Group.
Why a Change in Strategy is Needed in Foreign Aid to Sierra Leone
The best guarantee against pervasive poverty in Sierra Leone (SL) is a sound economy. Foreign aid is beneficial to Sierra Leoneans only if it can advance the goal of achieving a sound economy. We suggest a fundamental change in the strategy underlying foreign aid efforts as a way to overcome the past difficulties in achieving that goal.
The Case for Revaluation of the Sierra Leonean Currency
As the example of pre-World War II Germany attests, it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy. With a currency that has depreciated by more than 375,000 % since it was first devalued in 1979, and a people frequently ranked as the poorest in the world, SL's economy is in dire crisis.
We believe that the single greatest contributor to SL's economic crisis is the same one as that identified by one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, Lord John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain. In his seminal 1919 treatise, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," Lord Keynes accurately predicted that the destruction of the value of the German currency would precipitate a second world war, because, as he put it: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." For largely similar reasons, we believe SL's economic crisis to be rooted in the debauchery of the country's currency. Accordingly, we propose a never-before-tried measure in SL -- the revaluation of Sierra Leone's currency -- as the cornerstone of an economic recovery program for our country. This proposal is aimed at reversing the unprecedented inflation and other distortions in SL's economy in the wake of the 1979 devaluation and subsequent depreciation of the Leone that have made it virtually impossible to sustain economic growth or alleviate poverty.
Whereas devaluation is a potent cure for balance of trade problems in industrialized countries, in Sierra Leone it has spawned perverse consequences. In particular, devaluation has induced a condition of fundamental disequilibrium by creating a self-perpetuating vicious cycle of poverty - low incomes leading to low demand that leads to low production which leads to lower incomes.
Infrastructure has been depleted and the ability to maintain viability as a sovereign nation has rapidly decreased. The interruption of this cycle requires either massive external intervention, in general, or a controlled reversal of the currency devaluation, in particular. Our proposal to revalue the Leone is specifically intended to break that vicious cycle of poverty in which millions of Sierra Leoneans have long been trapped by reversing the currency devaluation.
How to Implement a Revaluation of the Sierra Leonean Currency The revaluation of the Leone requires meticulous and diligent planning for it to succeed. At a minimum, the process should be transparent and equitable enough to afford each and every Sierra Leonean a reasonable opportunity to adjust their business, educational, social and/or bureaucratic activities to the expected realities prescribed by the intended new exchange rate.
It can be done by a SL government decree to re-establish a par value for the currency against a major world currency such as the US dollar or the British pound. While government intervention is critical, simply decreeing the par value of the currency is not sufficient. Issues such as the use of old currency and corruption of the re-evaluation process could derail the effort. It also could potentially create a greatly destabilizing situation.
Alternatively, value in the Leone can be re-established through open market interventions, including, but not limited to, actions by the Sierra Leone government and private Sierra Leoneans pursuing their legitimate business and other interests, in buying and selling foreign currency. While this would require far more time than a decree, it would inspire greater market confidence, create lesser disturbance of social strata, and distribute the wealth being injected into the country more evenly than by simple government fiat.
The Critical Role of Foreign Aid Whichever mechanism is chosen, the infusion of foreign exchange into the banking system at levels sufficient to sustain the exchange rate of the Leone at par with the benchmark foreign currency will be critical to the success of the revaluation. This is where foreign aid can play a critical role -- by providing the foreign exchange required to sustain the exchange rate through the transition period until market stability is achieved without the need for such support.
The benefits will be significant: The harmful parallel market for foreign currency would disappear, thereby restoring all foreign exchange transactions within the official banking system. This will decrease the need for foreign exchange support by aid donors. The removal of the distortions in SL's economy would engender growth by removing the purchasing power disadvantage imposed upon indigenous Sierra Leoneans.
At that point, the remaining focus of efforts to alleviate poverty would be SL government action to correct income disparities that would otherwise prevent the widespread dispersal of the benefits of the economic growth resulting from the revaluation of the currency.
About the Authors Mohamed Jalloh is the founding Managing Director of a financial services company based in suburban Washington, D.C., USA, that manages investments for corporations, partnerships and high net worth individuals. His internationally published writings on the effects of foreign aid and devaluation on Sierra Leone's development span the last twenty-eight years.
Jonathan Rose is a research and development engineer and organizational management specialist based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. He has been studying currency economics for the past twenty years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2007 Concord Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
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Subject: Re: For Bambay: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Adviser
To: All
Date Posted: 06:37:27 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-21-126-109.res.east.verizon.net at 70.21.126.109
Message:
There is one reason why the APC should try what Moh'm and Rose are recommending as their never-before tried solution to the hyper-inflation bedevilling Sierra leone. To me it is too obvious. So obvuious in fact it is a no-brainer -- all the other solutions have failed. That's right, failed -- IMF, World bank, UN, G8 -- all came to zero!
So, why not try your own Sierra leone brothers' solution, President Ernest Koroma? Everything else has failed, so far!
Subject: Re: For Bambay: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S SOUND ECONOMICS
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 18:17:15 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
This is a novel idea which would work if our donors were willing to go along with it. When I break it down, it is essentially asking our donors to do the work of the BoSL. Provide a float of foreign foreign currency (i.e the foreign reserves we squandered)that will support the revaluation of the leone. I'm not sure how the UK, US or other government's would have an incentive to do this. But for argument's sake, lets say that they went along with the idea. What would happen is that they would have to keep pouring in dollars in exchange for leones until some equilibrium point was reached where Sierra Leoneans and our trading partners realized that it didn't make any difference if they held leones or dollars because there was an unlimited supply of dollars available in exchange for leones. Where is that eqilibrium point? 500 million dollars? 1 billion? 5 billion? The trouble with this analysis is what do the donors do with the leones that they have acquired? Unless there is something that they want (e.g. petroleum) they are stuck with a bunch of worthless leones, because no one outside Sierra Leone really wants them. So as they begin to unload their stock of leones on our economy, the value of the leone will once again begin to depreciate.
My conclusion is that if we want to change the value of our currecny in the global economy, certain fundamentals need to change. We must first become self-sufficent in growing our staple food, then we must identify growth industries and attract serious foreign investors to participate. We must attract more tourists and other foreign currency generating activities. We must invest in our people and create a skilled workforce, invest more in cottage industries, to create a vibrant domestic economy. We must employ strategies of import subsitution, import more intermediate goods rather than finished products. Above all, we must be patient, but consistent. It took only 3 to 5 years to destroy our economy. It will take a generation to fix it.
Subject: Re: For Bambay: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 08:03:24 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"This is a novel idea which would work if our donors were willing to go along with it." KKW
That is not true, sorry.
Jalloh and Rose did not make or imply any such statement. What the two gentlemen stated in their article is that donor funds could be one -- but not the ONLY -- means of funding the foreign exchange requirements for revaluing the Leone. Here, read the relevant excerpt for yourself:
"Alternatively, value in the Leone can be re-established through open market interventions, including, but not limited to, actions by the Sierra Leone government and private Sierra Leoneans pursuing their legitimate business and other interests, in buying and selling foreign currency."
See, Moh'm and Rose never said that foreign aid is the only way to finance the revaluation of the Leone. They gave several alternatives, including that quoted above. That is your own erroneous conclusion.
You also came to some wildly wrong conclusions in your following statement: " What would happen is that they would have to keep pouring in dollars in exchange for leones until some equilibrium point was reached where Sierra Leoneans and our trading partners realized that it didn't make any difference if they held leones or dollars because there was an unlimited supply of dollars available in exchange for leones. Where is that eqilibrium point? 500 million dollars? 1 billion? 5 billion? The trouble with this analysis is what do the donors do with the leones that they have acquired?"
The trouble with your argument is that you do not understand the point that Moh'm and Jonathan Rose were making in their article. Let me try to simplify it for you. First of all, ask yourself a simple question: Why does Sierra Leone need foreign exchange? The answer: To pay for imports and other foreign expenses.
If you understand that simple point, you will see how wildly wrong your permutations and speculations about are about "What would happen is that they would have to keep pouring in dollars in exchange for leones until some equilibrium point was reached where Sierra Leoneans and our trading partners realized that it didn't make any difference if they held leones or dollars because there was an unlimited supply of dollars available in exchange for leones. Where is that eqilibrium point?"
You see, my non-economist friend, economics is not a layman's subject. Had you been an economist, you would have understood the simple fact that, since Sierra Leone needs foreign exchange only to pay for imports and other foreign expenses, the answer to the question of how much foreign exchange our country needs in any one year is totally obvious. That answer is quite simply the total amount of foreign exchange Sierra Leone spends on imports and other foreign expenses! See, it is that simple -- not some wild speculation about billions and who knows what? That is the amount of foreign exchange needed to be infused into the official banking system to sustain the Leone at parity with the dollar. Not some "1 billion? 5 billion?" as you wildly speculated.
For your information, Sierra Leone's imports and foreign expenditure average only $300 million a year. It does not take too much knowledge to understand that Sierra Leone's diamond, gold, coffee, fish, iron ore and other exports can generate that amount of foreign exchange easily in any one year -- if the government ensures that all exports go through the banking system.
That is exactly what Moh'm and Rose state among their recommendations to President Ernest Koroma in the best discussion forum for Sierra Leoneans on the Internet, SALONEDiscussion Group's Compendium of recommendations that has already been sent to President Koroma in Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: For Bambay: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Lala
To: All
Date Posted: 18:59:05 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
"We must first become self-sufficent in growing our staple food, then we must identify growth industries and attract serious foreign investors to participate. We must attract more tourists and other foreign currency generating activities. We must invest in our people and create a skilled workforce, invest more in cottage industries, to create a vibrant domestic economy. We must employ strategies of import subsitution, import more intermediate goods rather than finished products. Above all, we must be patient, but consistent. It took only 3 to 5 years to destroy our economy. It will take a generation to fix it."
As you have stated above, this could be done only when both the donors, foreign agencies, IMF/World Bank
and the Sierra Leone leaders in Sierra Leone and outside Sierra Leone take a drastic revolutionary measures to the develop the needed infrastructures in Sierra Leone. We should always negotiate and close a win-win deal for the countries involved and not a "win-lose" one.
How can we do that? First, we should not accept the negative strings/conditions attached to the loans. Second, foreign money coming in to develop any particular sector or infrastructure must not pass through the president and or any minister. Let the foreign agency or donor come into the country, employ Sierra Leoneans and build whatever the fund targeted for. The agency or foreign company will handover key to the structure to the Sierra Leone government upon completion. If the project is not done or incomplete, we owe them nothing.
Subject: lets move on
From: patriot one
To: All
Date Posted: 17:15:29 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: anonymous@msn.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
Elections are over. My apc and slpp brothers lets move on. the few that are involved in intimidation if true should be stopped. and those that use this as an oportunity to spread propaganda shoudl stop. we need more positive thinking. we need solutions to our problems. There shoudl be accountability none the less. accountability in an intelligent way. not one of witch hunt but one of justice. and lets hold our police to high standards. whatever thugery is going on from both sides need to stop. dont we want to be known as the "japan" of africa one day. i dont like to use other countries as comparison. but we can be strong on education, economicsal growth, military might, and freedom of the people and press with a strogn democracy. lets grow up as a nation. in the name of love for our country. i dont like that you cannot speak the truth without been labeled by one of the sides in salone. this polarization is not good for our country. election is over lets govern now. at the same time the newspapers shoudlnto give a blank check to coruption or should not be used as means of false propaganda. or as a tool of misconstruing the truth. i know i am gonna get the heat for this from either side. God bless salone
Subject: for you bra E
From: sumana
To: All
Date Posted: 17:14:33 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: suma @aol.com
Entered From: pool-72-66-26-251.washdc.fios.verizon.net at 72.66.26.251
Message:
BRA E I HONESTLY RESPECT AND ADMIRE YOU. BUT PLEASE DA TRUE WAY GO SKATA MARAID OSE NOR TUK AM. PLEASE HELP US BUILD FROM WITHIN SO WE CAN BE A STRONG PARTY.
Subject: Former Vice President's Interview.
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 15:58:03 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib234.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.77
Message:
Read.
Subject: FLIP-FLOPPING TO THE CORE
From: KING LOGGY
To: All
Date Posted: 17:04:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
AT: In the light of this issue of victimization, do you still want your supporters to give all their support to the new President as you asked them to do on September 17th 2007 when you conceded defeat?
SB: Oh yes, yes, yes! Ernest Bai Koroma is the President of Sierra Leone. Ernest Koroma is my president; he is your president and he is the president of all my supporters in Sierra Leone. I continue to call upon all my supporters to recognize his Presidency and constructively support him in any positive development initiative he might have for this country.
AT: The SLPP seems to be going through a tough time. Is there any word of encouragement you might want to give SLPP supporters who will be reading this interview?
SB: Yes, it is simple, Stay SLPP and serve the interests of the SLPP. It is a great party and it will soon win another elections since the benchmarks for us to win are all there. I urge all to stay the course of our forefathers who formed the party. Hope is just over the horizon. Don’t be lured to support the ruling party or to take positions in the APC Government. Stay within the SLPP and build it up to be strong enough to face the rulers.
AT: So, what will you say about those SLPP supporters who have accepted political appointments in the ruling APC Party? Will you describe them as opportunists?
SB: I will not go that far to use that descr1ption but I will express my disappointment that they chose to go that way. It destroys democracy for partisans to be so weak and susceptible to lured political baits. We need to strengthen democracy in this country by keeping the various political parties intact and opposed to each other’s political ideals.
AT: You have already asked your supporters to recognize the Presidency of Ernest Bai Koroma. What will be your message to all as President Koroma gets inaugurated into office on Thursday?
SB: As I said before, Ernest Koroma is my President and should be supported as President of Sierra Leone. I now wish every Sierra Leonean a happy Inauguration celebration and I trust we will continue to see bright days ahead and prosperity will continue on the path that the SLPP had set for this post-conflict country as an indivisible one country and one people under God.
Subject: Re: Former Vice President's Interview.
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 17:01:37 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.149.155.255
Message:
"What about the accusation levied that your Government failed to market yourself through effective propagation methods thus leading to the descr1ption of ‘Mumu’ (Mute) Government?"
SB: "In retrospect, I totally agree with that allegation. However, keep in mind that we were all assigned roles and everyone was to do theirs to the best of their ability as they swore on oath. I did mine to the best of my ability. Those who failed to do what would have prevented us from being misunderstood and misjudged, will be left to their conscience and will get judged by History"
How could the SLPP have marketed themselves in order to gain public support? when they're bent on syphoning state funds. Sylvia stopped short of saying the above.
This interview is ofcourse an opportunity to praise and console the failed leader and also to say thanks to Sylvia in the part of Berewa for her continuous lies during the elections.
If it was a neutral news paper, the outcome of that interview would have been different.
SLPP and SYLVIA should be ashamed of themselves for bragging about the pathetic Le546 million or so when the clan received a huge US$1.7billion throughout their ten year tnure of office. Where's all that money? oh, I forgot it was given out as loans to SLPP clan family members and supporters.
I say the interview is just a discussion.
Subject: Re: Former Vice President's Interview.
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 02:43:58 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
SB: "In retrospect, I totally agree with that allegation. However, keep in mind that we were all assigned roles and everyone was to do theirs to the best of their ability as they swore on oath. I did mine to the best of my ability. Those who failed to do what would have prevented us from being misunderstood and misjudged, will be left to their conscience and will get judged by History"
Hi Eddie Grant
I would like to add that this interview was incomplete when Sylvia failed to ask Berewa about his relationship with his former boss kabba especially in the post election.
I knew that kabba bullied Berewa and never really wanted him to succeed him as president, he imposed an unpopular running mate in the person of Momodu koroma on him against his preferred choice and with great scepticism from the party membership at large.
Berewa could have stood up to kabba, but the latter, known for his vindictiveness, could have leaned on the judges to decide against Berewa in the court case brought by Margai challenging the constitutionality of Berewa's leadership.
I knew from day one that kabba was not an asset to the SLPP and had plotted to give power to the APC. That was why I was consistently opposed to him. I have had discussions with some new SLPP parliamentarians who conceded that my critism of kabba was correct. In fact large section of the SLPP membership now believes that Kabba did not only cost them the election but was actually a traitor.
So Berewa,s quote above has lots of untold meanings.
To me kabba picked on the weak Berewa. Berewa like kabba was not a typical party man. Berewa like kabba had no political constituent. Unfortunately for Berewa he made a mistake by campaigning on kabba's despised policy of continuety much to the annoyance of people like me.
My advise to the SLPP is that they have to investigate the reasons why they lost the election. And what role did Kabba played in enforcing that defeat.
Subject: Re: Former Vice President's Interview.
From: The Nationalist
To: All
Date Posted: 20:49:32 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: h167-156-253.63.chubb.com at 167.156.63.253
Message:
Sylvia's interviews were self-serving. She is preying on the instability of our political players to feather her own nests.SLPPers, you are in for a shock.Soon, Sylvia will go red.
Subject: Re-branding Sierra Leone
From: Get Some Backbone Salone.
To: All
Date Posted: 15:53:04 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 5ac25f31.bb.sky.com at 90.194.95.49
Message:
I think that signboard should be reomved/replaced with immediate effect.If I were a visiting businessman I would wonder what sort of passive and couch-potato people plead for help and not corruption on billboards at their national ports???? It would actually encourage me to try and hoodwink Sierra Leoneans even if that was not my original intention.
I once drove into the state of Texas from Atlanta while visiting the US (from the UK) and was terrified by the billboards at the roadside of the highway that read: " DONT MESS WITH TEXAS" , "DONT ARRIVE ON VACATION AND LEAVE ON PROBATION". That is the sort of billboard that is capable of having a deterent effect on potential trouble-makers, not wimpy, spineless and passive statements that embarrass us.
Subject: Re: Re-branding Sierra Leone
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 17:23:05 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
I agree. The country needs to be rebranded on many, many levels.
Subject: Re: Re-branding Sierra Leone (Sierra Corrupt Leone)
From: bobs
To: All
Date Posted: 16:16:24 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
The funny thing is, when it comes to SIERRA LEONE, our middle name is CORRUPT. (Sierra Corrupt Leone)
Subject: SLPP cold feet
From: Abdul Foday
To: All
Date Posted: 15:11:22 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: pafoday@msn.com
Entered From: cpe-071-070-218-154.nc.res.rr.com at 71.70.218.154
Message:
Blaming SLPP for not showing up at the innauguration of Ernest Koroma clearly shows how bias your so called cocorioko news outlet is. I do not think I have ever read in your news outlet condemning, if not all but some of the harassment and intimidations agaist SLPP supporters.And who lacks the poor gamesmanship? APC is getting rid of SLPP members in top positions because APC feels they are a threat? APC is now in power and those who are not members should give way to APC...Same old APC way to create jobs for die hard APC members. Is looting and burning of SLPP offices and sacking of suspected SLPP members from government jobs a good gamesmanship by APC? If yes , then you are a true APC. I don't think SLPP has any business in the innauguration of Ernest Koroma because of these reasons and besides you cannot expect every jack and jill to be present-- Tejan Kabba was there anyway.And Please don't quote me wrong, am not an SLPP but just a concern citizen of Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: SLPP cold feet
From: johnny
To: All
Date Posted: 15:14:41 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ool-45737285.dyn.optonline.net at 69.115.114.133
Message:
Hey abdul becareful now, lest they ban you from cocorioko for life. Here, you cant afford to be critical of APC or cocorioko, else you risk been blocked.
Subject: Re: SLPP cold feet
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 17:33:33 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-137-114-42.range86-137.btcentralplus.com at 86.137.114.42
Message:
Who says so? Cocorioko, I believe shopuld have grown above pettiness!! They made a good run and most us us were on the forum advocating on behalf of our party. They did not ban us. i, at one point could not post and thought I had become a victim buit things were not so.
Cocorioko will not ban you for speaking that which is true and decent.
Subject: Re: SLPP cold feet
From: Abdul Foday
To: All
Date Posted: 15:41:34 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: pafoday@msn.com
Entered From: cpe-071-070-218-154.nc.res.rr.com at 71.70.218.154
Message:
Johnny, Am not sure whether you are a staff at cocorioko,however your statement(Banning me for life and risk been blocked) seems to me as a threat and counters good journalism. I was expecting a good reason or reply to my views about your insensitivity to SLPP members rather than threatening to keep me quiet.
Subject: G20 finance ministers hold talks in South Africa.
From: NEWS
To: All
Date Posted: 14:22:05 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
Speaking of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Subject: Statement by IMF Staff Mission to the Republic of Sierra Leo
From: NEWS
To: All
Date Posted: 14:57:42 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
IMF
Subject: Re: Statement by IMF Staff Mission to the Republic of Sierra Leo
From: NEWS
To: All
Date Posted: 15:01:36 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
IMF
Subject: BANK GOVERNOR MURDERED..
From: KARIM
To: All
Date Posted: 13:59:56 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: KARIM@JAHOO.COM
Entered From: pool-72-66-26-251.washdc.fios.verizon.net at 72.66.26.251
Message:
I WAS A SMALL BOY WHEN MY MOTHER READ THAT HEADLINE TO ME I MUST HAVE BEEN IN CLASS 1 OR 2. I DID NOT KNOW WHO THE BANK GOVERNOR WAS. THAT SAME TIME I LEARNT A NEW WORD INQUEST, WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME OF THAT INQUEST ? PLEASE LET,S LEAVE THE LATE MAN,S NAME IN PEACE. I HAVE HEARD PEOPLE SAYING HE WAS KILLED BY THE OLD APC THUGS. ARE THEY THE SAME THUGS WHO KILLED SALAMI COKER, KOLA SAMBA & OTHERS.
Subject: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: BRA ENVIABLE
To: All
Date Posted: 13:54:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
As a perceived maverick, I am once again sounding a siren cry about the SLPP and the need for fresh thinking within Sierra Leone's oldest political organization. Blessed with skin thick enough to absorb criticism and name-calling without buckling, I am frequently on record for being candid rather than unctuous. After the inauguration of President Koroma last week, the SLPP's absence at the ceremony left me with a puzzle to dissect. Was the SLPP's absence due to Solomon Berewa's ability to pull strings behind the scenes?
Is the post-elections SLPP fragmented into enclaves made up of pragmatists and moaning party members? Are the pragmatists being bludgeoned into a backward-thinking mode by the moaning wing of the party? Was there not a single believer in "Real Politik" to urge the party into attending the inauguration because politics is based on reality rather than sentimental gratification?
In his first newspaper interview since the presidential elections, Solomon Berewa told the "Awareness Times" that the SLPP's reputation previously took a dent because the opposition APC conducted a superior propaganda campaign. If the sulking members of the party overcome the pragmatists by continuing to be sentimental rather than practical, the SLPP is sure to lose the next battle on both the electoral and public relations fronts. Poor at being progressive but gifted at lying, the APC has all the condiments to cook cock and bull stories intended to taint their opponents with villainy of the deepest dye.
The party did it in the past by spilling blood to depict South-easterners as cannibals. With the instruments of national power in its hands, the APC needs a wiser opponent schooled in both realism and naughty, public relations exercises.
We can put the inaugural "glitch" behind us by ensuring that our dislike of the APC must never prevent us from advertising our wares in any marketplace with a constituency to attract. If a political fossil like Solomon Berewwa was behind the SLPP's absence at the inauguration, common sense should make us wrest control from a party member consigned to permanent obscurity. It is simply foolish to help an outgoing man heal his emotional wounds while inflicting septic wounds on a political party that must deal with current realities for its own survival.
Recruitment of cadres, fresh thinking to match the realities of the moment, and competitive campaigns to match the oodles of over-statements being issued by the APC, should be the SLPP's priorities for now. Listening to an outdated raconteur like Solomon Berewa will be a politically stupid thing to do. The APC's propaganda is turbo-charged, and from Senegal to Ghana, the Ernest Koroma's search lights are beaming with embroidered stories to make him look like a savior. President Koroma's Jesuitical stories can be denied luster by a fresh-thinking SLPP. Inaugural absenteeism gave the APC few public relations points that can be retaken once Solomon Berewa is allowed to rest into oblivion.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Erica Adams
To: All
Date Posted: 18:05:17 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: ericamonique82@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-074-185-005-235.sip.clt.bellsouth.net at 74.185.5.235
Message:
I think the SLPP issue is more basic than you think. When I see EBK, I am reminded of President Bill Clinton. Not because of policy or intellect, but just solely because of presence. In order for someone to even come close to competing with EBK in the next election, that person is going to have to look presidential. EBK (aside from being very handsome), appears approachable, at ease, and has a commnanding presence. If you remember back to Clinton's two terms, he had blunders and things happened that would have taken the average politician down, but his approval rating seldom suffered greatly. The SLPP needs great strategist and some consultants to help with image and packaging. You can have the best ideas and agenda but you won't get far if you don't have "it". You are definatly going have to move beyond the old guard because they do not have "it".
Even with the current US campaigning. It's only in the last week that I have heard commentators say Obama looks at ease. One of the big questions was "does he look presidental"? Like it or not, so much of polictics is about lights, camera, action.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Blitz
To: All
Date Posted: 00:02:51 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: unikad5@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 82.99.234.160
Message:
Erica, with your comments, you simply blew my sox off!
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 18:20:24 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
The 'it' factor is key for success in business and politics. It really is a superficial aspect of politics that someone's commanding presence or Denzelism is sexier than his ideas, but this is politics today. It is realpolitik! As the SLPP gears up for the next electoral bout, we hope for progressive ideas wrapped in a nice, sexy, pulchritudinous package to enthrall the masses. Thanks Erica for bringing this to light.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Waraba
To: All
Date Posted: 19:10:01 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: saigobe@lanset.com
Entered From: pool-71-179-99-138.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net at 71.179.99.138
Message:
Aminata,
I thought you are going to run for president.
Waraba
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Palampoh
To: All
Date Posted: 19:52:37 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
This is a sign of "laybellehism" You are good at that.
Wbara Tabara Dabara Pussy Cat ara!
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION: WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 17:46:09 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-137-114-42.range86-137.btcentralplus.com at 86.137.114.42
Message:
I will be hesitant in inferring that Solomon Berewa was in any way connected with the absenteism of the failed past executive of the SLPP. bra Enviable, did you try to contact Solo Bee to find out why the few of the failed SLPP executive boycotted the inauguration?
I am in the know that majority of the ordinary SLPP supporters and members went to grace the national agenda. Those elements who decided not to, out of selfish desires, are not the voice of the people whom they betrayed. Their greed, selfishness and arrogance will eveer remain to haunt them. Trust me they speak not for the SLPP.
Subject: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: BRA ENVIAVLE
To: All
Date Posted: 11:18:12 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
As a perceived maverick, I am once again sounding a siren cry about the SLPP and the need for fresh thinking within Sierra Leone's oldest political organization. Blessed with skin thick enough to absorb criticism and name-calling without buckling, I am frequently on record for being candid rather than unctuous. After the inauguration of President Koroma last week, the SLPP's absence at the ceremony left me with a puzzle to dissect. Was the SLPP's absence due to Solomon Berewa's ability to pull strings behind the scenes?
Is the post-elections SLPP fragmented into enclaves made up of pragmatists and moaning party members? Are the pragmatists being bludgeoned into a backward-thinking mode by the moaning wing of the party? Was there not a single believer in "Real Politik" to urge the party into attending the inauguration because politics is based on reality rather than sentimental gratification?
In his first newspaper interview since the presidential elections, Solomon Berewa told the "Awareness Times" that the SLPP's reputation previously took a dent because the opposition APC conducted a superior propaganda campaign. If the sulking members of the party overcome the pragmatists by continuing to be sentimental rather than practical, the SLPP is sure to lose the next battle on both the electoral and public relations fronts. Poor at being progressive but gifted at lying, the APC has all the condiments to cook cock and bull stories intended to taint their opponents with villainy of the deepest dye.
The party did it in the past by spilling blood to depict South-easterners as cannibals. With the instruments of national power in its hands, the APC needs a wiser opponent schooled in both realism and naughty, public relations exercises.
We can put the inaugural "glitch" behind us by ensuring that our dislike of the APC must never prevent us from advertising our wares in any marketplace with a constituency to attract. If a political fossil like Solomon Berewwa was behind the SLPP's absence at the inauguration, common sense should make us wrest control from a party member consigned to permanent obscurity. It is simply foolish to help an outgoing man heal his emotional wounds while inflicting septic wounds on a political party that must deal with current realities for its own survival.
Recruitment of cadres, fresh thinking to match the realities of the moment, and competitive campaigns to match the oodles of over-statements being issued by the APC, should be the SLPP's priorities for now. Listening to an outdated raconteur like Solomon Berewa will be a politically stupid thing to do. The APC's propaganda is turbo-charged, and from Senegal to Ghana, the Ernest Koroma's search lights are beaming with embroidered stories to make him look like a savior. President Koroma's Jesuitical stories can be denied luster by a fresh-thinking SLPP. Inaugural absenteeism gave the APC few public relations points that can be retaken once Solomon Berewa is allowed to rest into oblivion.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Knice
To: All
Date Posted: 15:22:17 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ool-457836a6.dyn.optonline.net at 69.120.54.166
Message:
Hell hath no fury like democracy scorned. The SLPP's present predicament is a direct result of deliberate manipulation of its last convention to hand-select a ticket about which the vast majority of the party's base was at best lukewarm. Nothing personal - I don't know Sol Berewah or Momodu Sesay. What I do know is that neither has deep roots in the SLPP, and the results confirmed that they were not especially attractive candidates. Were the convention open and transparent it is very likely that neither would have been on the ticket.
As it stands it is my opinion that the SLPP's challenge is more fundamental than a need to become pragmatic. The SLPP has not been a functional political party since they were rendered illegitimate by APC summary declaration of their notorious one-party state in 1972. The party seemingly returned around 1991 or so with president Momoh's 'restoration' of multi-party democracy, but in name only. Having been defunct for all those years, the SLPP did not have the organization, financial resources, and wherewithal to really matter. Control of the party was promptly seized by opportunists, and it won the 1996 elections only because Sierra Leoneans at large were by then totally disgusted with APC heavy handedness and incompetence.
True SLPPers need not hang their head in shame. There is also no need for anger. For we have not really seen or experienced the SLPP of vision by the likes Julius Gulama and Sir Milton, etc. since 1967. The phantom that emerged in 1996 was an impostor driven by opportunists who squandered the party's good reputation without any investments in her resuscitation that was crucial after all those years in limbo.
Take heart! The results of August 2007 were not a rejection of the SLPP. They were a rejection of twelve years of pettiness and unwillingness to pursue fundamental structural changes without which Sierra Leone will continue as a wobbly deck of cards. There can be no excuse for not bringing clean water, twenty-four-seven electricity, and cleaning the streets of the capital city in twelve years; no matter that it was APC mismanagement that created these problems in the first place. Nor can a party hope to energize its base by sacrificing one it’s genuine and giant heroes, to a miserable death in prison in the total custody of foreigners.
Those who bleed true palm tree green must in fact welcome the results of August 2007. The impostors have been exposed and rejected. And now lies ahead a golden opportunity to revive the vision of Gulama and Margai, the true-green SLPP vision. This vision of a diverse country of multi-party democracy, where elections are fair and transparent, and also held on schedule; where merit and accountability are the norm; where individualism is valued, and liberties for individuals supreme. This is the SLPP vision. And it is still in my opinion the best blueprint for Sierra Leone. The challenge for the SLPP above a return to an undefined pragmatism is to compose an effective message that communicates these values.
I want to congratulate the APC on their victory. That a party with their baggage can dismiss an administration of twelve years standing; an administration that successfully concluded a ten-year civil war that APC policies fermented, is both testament to the inept so-called SLPP effort, and a hint at the magnitude of what is in my opinion truly a miracle. I will also be the happiest man if I were absolutely wrong about the APC. I want Bai Koromah and the APC administration to succeed beyond my wildest imaginations. But I remain a skeptic!
The APC in my observation has been far more skillful at winning elections than at running a government. Their record is of intense intolerance without respect for diversity. Compromise is alien to them and they simply do not understand the concept of merit. It has to be their way or one is a tribalist. Sierra Leoneans are advised to not just listen to what the APC says, but to keenly observe what they actually do. Above all I want to see six years from now, if they can as the ‘SLPP’ just did, run a clean and transparent election.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: silent majority
To: All
Date Posted: 06:10:15 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 195.54.236.138
Message:
This vision of a diverse country of multi-party democracy, where elections are fair and transparent, and also held on schedule; where merit and accountability are the norm; where individualism is valued, and liberties for individuals supreme. This is the SLPP vision. And it is still in my opinion the best blueprint for Sierra Leone.... KNICE
Very well put sir.....very well put. But as they say 'the devil is in the detail' So my challenge to you is this:
Would this vision include the reform of land tenure such that
1. Freehold land is available everywhere in Sierra Leone? (maximum individual freedom and all that...)
2.Every Sierra Leonean can buy freehold land anywhere in Sierra Leone? (Equity and justice and all that...)
If not ...why not?
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 03:26:24 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
Knice:
An extremely accurate analysis. When I read your comment I thought I dictated it. Any true blue SLPP should thank you for your comment. Sometimes the truth hurt but this defeat of the SLPP was necessary. You can get in touch with the real me on: y020855@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 18:05:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
I am breathlessly fascinated with your cogency.
Despite the hooks and upper cuts you threw at the APC, I still find your brilliance scintillating. How come I never saw your posts before sir? You and Bra Enviable...Oh dear! God Bless you sir.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 17:16:32 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
Greetings my "big brother" KNICE! As always, your opinions continue to enlighten and challenge this reader. My instincts (and indeed strong family roots) are with the SLPP, but in all honesty, I was unable to identify with the party that took power in 1996 and recently suffered such an ignominous defeat. Maybe it was the alliance with the NUP, maybe there were other factors, but the core values and vision you attribute to the party were conspiculously absent in the last 12 yesrs.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: KING LOGGY
To: All
Date Posted: 17:50:44 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
The SLPP must learn how to manage diversity period! That's what politics in a multi-cultural society is all about.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: BRA ENVIABLE
To: All
Date Posted: 15:30:38 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
Knice, as usual, I enjoy reading your opinion. As well as adding more flesh to the bone, your opinion brings newer dimensions to complex topics.
Stay blessed, Bra
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 14:44:53 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
I am in awe of your superior logic, Bra. The SLPP can avoid the fate of Tyranosaurus rex if they only heed your wise counsel instead of the arrant nonsense of JJ Bloody Mary and Co. But Bra, take am easy with Pa Berewa. De Pa don suffer too much. Nar for sorry for de poor man. Enjoy your Sunday, boss man.
Subject: Re: FOR SLPP CONSUMPTION. WATER THE PALM TREE WITH REALISM
From: BRA ENVIABLE
To: All
Date Posted: 15:25:23 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
Peace out, Fen Plaba. Next time you go on a drinking spree, do not forget to pass me some Budweiser {sp} via the last Grey Hound train leaving the north for the dirty south.
Subject: TRUER WORDS
From: KING LOGGY
To: All
Date Posted: 11:48:41 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-68-49-205-105.hsd1.va.comcast.net at 68.49.205.105
Message:
"We can put the inaugural "glitch" behind us by ensuring that our dislike of the APC must never prevent us from advertising our wares in any marketplace with a constituency to attract. If a political fossil like Solomon Berewwa was behind the SLPP's absence at the inauguration, common sense should make us wrest control from a party member consigned to permanent obscurity. It is simply foolish to help an outgoing man heal his emotional wounds while inflicting septic wounds on a political party that must deal with current realities for its own survival."
Subject: about opening a refinery
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 10:46:48 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngthinker@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
hi my brothers and sister. what do you think it would cost us to open a refinery in sierra leone. I woudl prefer at our borders because of our bad roads. dont you think sierra leone economy woudl improve ? Nigeria imports oil still even though they have crude oil because they dont have enough refinery capacity. I feel if we have security in salone and democracy gets better freedom fo the press it would encourage companies to invest in that area. what do you all think? i am just putting it out there. I want us to share our thoughts. and you guys with the connection to the president can pass the information to him.
Subject: NPRC NOT SLPP SOLD OIL REFINERY
From: STRASSER
To: All
Date Posted: 06:58:27 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-250-43-213.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 69.250.43.213
Message:
Some of you guys like to hide the truth, it was the NPRC that sold oil refinery to Nigeria and that was a huge mistake, in fact it was considered one of Nigeria's assets slated for privatization and it was sold back to a private entity
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 14:33:34 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Governments should not be in business! Rule number one. Our govts cannot provide light,telephone systems and water and you are thinkimg about a refinery? That is a billion dollar industry!
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 16:58:58 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngthinker@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
lets dont poitn fingers . thats history now. lets dream as a people to do somethign positive. i think refinery closed before nprc. but thats not teh issue i am posting about. i am posting about hpe that we can have private refineres.
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 16:56:50 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngthinker07@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
yes for teh most part government should nto be in business. they never do it right. private sector is better as logn as their is accountability. we need strong unions if we are goign the private sector route. or else our workers would have no rights. if we can convince companies like 3 different companies to open refineries in saloen it woudl be a good thing. lets just dont let one company bribe our ministers and have a monopoly. because we alll knwo what happens behind the scene. even in the west these big companies try to buy government. we want to do it right. we dont want our government to be bought like how most republicans in the us are bought by big business/.
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: news
To: All
Date Posted: 13:45:36 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 177-67-ftth.onsneteindhoven.nl at 88.159.67.177
Message:
The NPRC sold our refinery to a Nigerian, Chief Tony. I think, Sierra Leoneans need to put their Country;s interest before self. When that is done, maybe, the Country will get its honour.
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: Lie Lie News
To: All
Date Posted: 14:08:52 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe-74-66-237-26.nyc.res.rr.com at 74.66.237.26
Message:
Please Check your facts sir! NPRC did not sell our refinery as you are claiming.
Matter of fact,Chief Tony has been doing business in Sierra Leone with a group called PANAF even before NPRC...
and the Refinery was eventually sold by the SLPP government to another group Chief Tony was associated with.. but recommended to Kabba by Sani Abacha.
For the records it was SLPP that SOLD Sierra Leone's Oil Refinery!
It is time people stop blaming the War and Warlords for every political miscue.
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 11:05:01 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
Young thinker, I don't know if you are the same person as "young Student" below but you raise an interesting point on the refinery. That, in fact, is one of my ideas for reducing Sierra Leone's import bill. We alreday have a refinery, but I'm not sure if it is still operational. I'm not clear on why Sierra Leone made the move to start importing refined petroleum instead of crude oil that was refined and distributed locally. It might have been because demand increased and the aging infrastructure at the refinery couldn't handle it. Whatever the reason, this would definitely be a worthwhile investment that not only saves foreign currency, but boosts local employment and reduces costs.
Subject: Re: about opening a refinery
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 11:15:10 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: young thinker@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
yes. we used to have a refinery but i think it was closed. we need a new one. i feel if we have security and stability it woudl attract foregn companies to come. I think if ebk brings 24 hr electricity and roads and airports are good with security salone would see a lot of improvements. but people are not gonna put billions in unless they know its safe. they might put thousands.
Subject: New Site Design: Is this it???
From: Town Crier
To: All
Date Posted: 10:13:07 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-71-227-59-251.hsd1.mi.comcast.net at 71.227.59.251
Message:
Please tell me the current frontend of the site is temporary, whilst you are working on the big release.
I know the possibilities of the system you are using, and if this is all you can come up with, I'm very dissapointed. I'm going to wait for an answer (if I get one) before commenting any more.
Thanks
Subject: Fen Plaba
From: Salone Observer
To: All
Date Posted: 06:52:19 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: lanfia@j2ltd.net
Entered From: at 65.183.2.101
Message:
Having been impressed by your consistently erudite, humorous,informed and sensible postings I kept thinking you must be a Product of some solid Institution. It therefore did not come as a surprise when I found out recently that you attended THE Bo School, my Alma Mater! Care for a link-up? Please call 876 454 4957 and I will call back immediately at my expense.
Subject: Re: Fen Plaba
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 14:04:54 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Thank you Salone Observer for the compliment. Trust me, the admiration is mutual. Visiting out of my phone range right now. Will be back after the Thanksgiving. I will definitely call you when I return. Any Bo School Boy is a brother of mine. Have a nice weekend and a wonderful thanksgiving.
God Bless,
Fen Plaba!
Subject: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 05:59:19 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Posted by FBC on November 18, 2007 at 05:56:56:
In Reply to: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW posted by KKW on November 17, 2007 at 21:22:20:
"From this point onwards, I agree with everything Mohm has catalogued.
Turning to potential methods of restoring the value of the leone - there is really only one way - rebuild those external reserves so that we have equilbrium between imports, exports, and external reserves." says KKW
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KKW, your honesty is refreshing. It is a pleasant change from the shameful childish rants of the few but loud people among us (the PH.D crowd whose ignorance of economics is surpassed only by their determination to pull down their fellow Sierra Leoneans.
I have known Mohamed Jalloh since we were both students at Fourah Bay College's Faculty of Economics and Social Studies in Freetown in the late 1970s. I sat in class with him until he was transferred to the honours economics class by Prof. N. A. Cox-George, the dean of the faculty of economics. When the head of the accounting department, Mrs. Subuola Thompson also transferred Moh'm to the honours accounting class at the same time, there was a big problem at FBC's economics faculty because no one had ever been in more than one honours program in the history of FBC's economics department.
While the departments heads wracked their brains for a solution to the "problem" caused by Moh'm's top-of-the-class performance not just in economics but also in accounting, some of us who were his friends joked that he had become Bra Spider in the story many Sierra Leoneans know -- with one rope to his waist held by the dean who was also head of the dept. of economics, and the other rope held by the head of the accounting dept. As many people now know, the problem about which dept. should have the honour of Moh'm's brilliant academic presence in its honours class was solved in a rather easy way, looking back at it. Both the economics dept. and the accounting dept. were given the honour of having Moh'm in their honours classes! In the process, history was made at FBC when Moh'm became the first Sierra Leonean in the then 150 history of FBC to simultaneously be in both the honours economics and honors accounting programmes.
Forgive me, KKW, for delving into the brief history of Moh'm's academic background, but it is very important for you and others who don't know this truly unique Sierra Leonean to know his background for two reasons. First of all, unlike many of these western economists at the IMF and World Bank, Moh'm studied economists under the best economist Sierra Leone (and maybe Africa) has ever produced -- the late Prof. N.A. Cox-George, who was also professor of economics in Nigeria as well as an internationally renowned expert on the economics of African economies. Second, unlike these so-called Western economists, Moh'm was also an eye-witness to many of Sierra Leone's economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s which are at the root of our country's current problems. For both of those reasons, in my book, Moh'm Jalloh knows more about the economic problems of Sierra Leone than anybody that I know -- Sierra Leonean or foreigner. Don't take my word for it, just read his many articles on Sierra Leone that he has been publishing openly for the past 30 years or so since during the first year after he graduated from FBC with an honors degree in economics and accounting.
Many of us have agreed with Moh'm Jalloh's economic analysis of Sierra Leone's economic problems for one simple reason -- everything he says is based on facts and sound economics. So, I am not surprised to hear you say that you agree with Moh'm "from this point onwards." The reason why you don't agree with him entirely is that (forgive me for saying this), you got some of your facts wrong. Let me point your major mistake that prevented you from entirely agreeing with Moh'm's absolutely correct analysis of Sierra Leone's economic problems.
It is not true, as you claimed, that: "The supply of dollars dried up as world prices for our unprocessed commodities nose-dived and the diamond industry was "liberalized" breaking the SLST/NDMC monopoly on diamond exports." The supply of dollars did not dry up -- the dollars simply came from elsewhere than Sierra Leone's exports of diamonds, etc.
For you to easily know that what you said is not true, ask yourself this question: If, as you claim, the supply of dollars dried up because of the OAU expenses, rising demand for exports, etc., how did Sierra Leone manage to finish the OAU projects and continue to pay for imports since 1981 up to this day?
The correct answer is the same one that Moh'm Jalloh has focused on as the root cause of the problems that have now made our country one of the poorest in the world despite our diamonds, gold, iron ore, cocoa, coffee, fish, timber, beaches, etc. So, what is the answer? The answer my friend is a three letter word that may as well be a four letter word, given the damage it has caused the people of Sierra Leone over the past 30 years. Let me give you another hint: Where did President Siaka Stevens in 1979 find the money to finance the OAU and pay for imported food, oil, etc up to 1985 when he handed over power to Gen. Joseph Momoh? Still haven't guessed?
Well, let me give you more clues: From 1985 until 1992, when his APC government was overthrown by the NPRC, where did President Momoh get foreign exchange to finance the import of oil and rice that kept Sierra Leoneans receiving electricity and driving their cars? If you still haven't guessed, here are more hints: Where did the NPRC get foreign exchange to keep on importing oil, rice, and other items that kept Sierra Leoneans receiving electricity more more regularly than not until 1996, when its successor, the SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah, made blackouts a permanent fixture in Sierra Leoneans' lives for the next eleven years? Still don't get the answer? Then, let me finally quote you something from one of Moh'm's Jalloh's articles:
"The plain truth is that it is the IMF, and to a lesser extent, the World Bank, under the direction of their Western benefactor countries in the G8, which have perpetrated the most widespread corruption and economic mismanagement in SL since its independence. Simply put, the IMF and the World Bank bear the greatest responsibility for the extreme poverty of Sierra Leoneans today. Therefore, any plan intended to reduce poverty in SL must primarily address the corruption of the IMF and the World Bank in SL over the past 35 years, or it would woefully fail."
So, there you have it: It is the IMF -- and no one else -- which insisted on the devaluation of the then strong Leone as a condition for lending money to President Siaka Stevens in 1979. Now, let me qyote fore you what Moh'm Jalloh once wrote to me about the IMF's action:
"Of course, there is nothing wrong with the IMF imposing conditions for lending its money to our country. However, it is extreme corruption for the IMF to pretend that when it asked the Sierra Leone government to devalue its then-strong Leone, it was doing so to HELP Sierra Leone solve its foreign exchange shortage problems. That is demonstrably false because the IMF knows -- or should have known -- that devaluation would never work to cure the balance of payments (foreign exchange shortage) of a country like Sierra Leone because the structure of the SL economy is materially different from that of the typical Western economy where devaluation succeeds spectacularly well to cure a balance of payments problem.
"Therefore, when you devalue the Leone, instead of increasing SL's export revenues and reducing the country's import expenditure and thereby bring its foreign exchange demand for gods and service into balance with its foreign exchange reserves (i.e., cure its balance of trade deficit), what you actually produce a very different result. That result is massive inflation, which devastates the purchasing power of millions of Sierra Leoneans, making their Leones buy less and less of increasingly expensive imported goods -- making them poorer and poorer and inflation escalates. That means fewer and fewer S/Leoneans are able to afford to buy expensive imported goods. Which, in turn, means that shops which sell imported goods -- SCOA, UAC, A. Genet, Kingsway, BATA -- no longer have enough customers who can afford to buy their increasingly expensive imported goods. And therefore, they go out of business. That is exactly what happened in SL after the IMF-instigated devaluation of the Leone in 1979 unleashed a catastrophic deterioration in the value of the Leone.
"But it the IMF fraud known as devaluation in SL did not just t ruin the consumer industry in SL. It also ruined the manufacturing industry inside SL. When the IMF-instigated devaluation generated massive inflation that devastated the purchasing power of millions of Sierra Leoneans, they could no longer afford to buy locally manufactured goods as well. In other words, they become very poor. So, who was going to buy the goods manufactured by our local industries? Foreigners? Not a chance! So, just like the foreign companies like UAC, SCOA, A. Genet selling imported goods that S/Leoneans could no longer afford to buy, local manufacturers also were forced out of business because impoverished S/Leoneans could no longer afford to buy their goods either. So, the manufacturers who were closing down laid off their employees -- increasing the number of S/Leoneans who have become impoverished.
"And that is exactly how the fearful economic tsunami known as the vicious cycle of poverty took hold of Sierra Leoneans over the past 30 years or so and drove them into depths of poverty not matched anywhere else in the world. Here's how the vicious cycle of poverty destroys an economy, as it destroyed SL's economy: First, inflation (caused in SL by IMF-instigated devaluation) leads to low purchasing power for S/Leoneans, leading to weak demand, leading to poor sales by suppliers, leading to the closing down of suppliers, leading to unemployment, leading to low incomes, leading to lower purchasing power -- and the cycle restarts, leading to weak demand, and so on)."
I received the above explanation from Moh'm Jalloh himself in 2005 after I read his article in Awareness Times where he explained in great detail WHY the IMF's devaluation destroyed the economy of Sierra Leone and made paupers of previously middle-class Sierra Leoneans. ("How the IMF Fooled the SL Government Into Impoverishing Sierra Leone). After reading it, I had wanted to know from Moh'm WHY the IMF would defraud the SL government.
And there you have it, KKW: You should now see that when you said you agreed with Moh'm from this point onwards, you really meant to say you agreeD with him totally, since, like him, you locate the root cause of the economic problem of our country with the entry of the IMF into our economy.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 10:52:28 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
FBC - Thanks for your contribution and clarifications. Note that I did not quesion the soundness of Mohm Jalloh's economic analysis. I am well aware of his reputation and am also aware of his work as marketing manager (director) at SLPMB, although I do not know him personally. I do not pretend to be an economist or lay any claim to a better unserstanding of macro-economics than Mohm, or indeed many other Sierra Leoneans far more qualified than myself in this field.
My point of difference with Mohm is that I firmly believe (and this belief is supported by many documents that I reviewed in the early 80's) that Sierra Leone was forced to go to the IMF because of our own economic mismanagement. I may have got the timing and sequence of events wrong, (after all it is almost 30 years ago!)but the Siaka Stevens government CREATED the sick patient that had to seek the IMF's medicine. So, if you can appreciate the fine distinction, if we had not messed up our economy ourselves in the first place, there would have been no reason for the IMF to come in and mess things up further. Mohm's treatise, and your amplification thereof, seem to imply that the IMF is solely responsible for Sierra Leone's woes and I strongly diasgree with that assertion.
That being said, I also do not subscribe to the demonization of the IMF for their attempts to resolve a problem of our own making. The IMF prescr1ption is simple and clear. The problem with it is that it was not designed for a subsistence and import depenedent economy such as ours. The assumptions that deregulation and devaluation would make Sierra Leone more competive globally, just do not make sense for us. However, it would make sense for say Germany after the 2nd world war, and perhaps some of the rising Asian tigers we see today. From all indications it is working for Ghana.
As we will probably have to agree to disagree on the historical analysis, let's move on to the future and what might be possible with a higher level of political committment than previous government's have been willing to demonstrate. Our top two imports are rice and petroleum. They are necessities not luxuries. The IMF's prescr1ption to raise tariffs or devalue the currency to curb imports will not work. We NEED these things no matter the cost. Inflation skyrockets, the population becomes restive, and sooner or later the government abandons the prescr1ption. What we ned to do now is look at a long term answer on removing rice and refined petroleum from the imports list and boosting exports (and the proceeds from exports) to build our foreign reserves. I have some ideas on this but will save that for a future discussion.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 12:51:46 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"Note that I did not quesion the soundness of Mohm Jalloh's economic analysis. I am well aware of his reputation and am also aware of his work as marketing manager (director) at SLPMB, although I do not know him personally. ..Mohm's treatise, and your amplification thereof, seem to imply that the IMF is solely responsible for Sierra Leone's woes and I strongly diasgree with that assertion."
KKW, thank you for your gracious comments, and especially for making it clear that, not being an economist, you are not questioning the soundness of Moh'm's analysis. As I have already stated, you are actually making the case for Moh'm's conclusions even though you are making a few but significant mistakes of fact that tend to lead you to believe otherwise.
I had pointed out the fundamental mistake you had initially made in my last reply. I hope you do not mind if I again point out the latest mistake of fact that you made and which led you to believe that ". ..Moh'm's treatise, and your amplification thereof, seem to imply that the IMF is solely responsible for Sierra Leone's woes" which you state you "strongly diasagree with that assertion."
You see, KKW, how can you agree with an assertion that Moh'm did NOT make? Let me show what I mean when I say you are letting your errors of fact prevent you from totally agreeing with Moh'm. Let me quote you from Moh'm's article that should have helped you realize the error in your above-quoted statement that Moh'm blames only the IMF for Sierra Leone's problems. In fact, that is a totally false statement on your part (sorry but I have to state the fact). Therefore, when I show you that it is false, I hope you will correct your fundamental mistake. Moh'm never blamed ONLY the IMF. Not at all. If fact, he blamed three entities -- the IMF, the World Bank AND the Sierra Leone governments for creating our country's current economic problems. So, do you see how wrong you are to say, as you did, that Moh'm only blames the IMF?
What might have confused you -- and Chris who replied to you agreeing with your mistake without apparently making sure he read and understood what Moh'm wrote -- is that of all three (and to repeat, Moh'm identified three culprits), the IMF bore the greatest responsibility for Sierra Leone's economic problems because it was the one which knowingly instigated a transparently inappropriate policy of devaluation of our country's currency. KKW, please forgive me for repeating this, but saying that the IMF bears the greatest responsibility (what Moh'm actually stated) does NOT equate to saying -- as you said in obvious error -- that the IMF is the only one responsible. Like I said, I hope you would correct your significant mistake. I also hope Chris will correct his undiscerning adoption of your own mistake.Here's what Moh'm actually wrote:
"So, who bears the greatest responsibility for the pathetic paradox of Sierra Leoneans wallowing in abject poverty amidst an abundance of minerals and other natural resources? If you answered that it is the IMF, aided and abetted by the World Bank deliberately, and, to a lesser extent, by the SL government, unwittingly, you would be absolutely right."
SOURCE: Mohamed A. Jalloh. "How the World Bank Helped the IMF Impoverish Sierra Leone." Awareness Times, December 10, 2005. (Please see the link below to access Moh'm's entire article).
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 17:02:23 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
The threads are getting long and difficult to follow but I thought I would repond to this last point using your own format:
"So, who bears the greatest responsibility for the pathetic paradox of Sierra Leoneans wallowing in abject poverty amidst an abundance of minerals and other natural resources? If you answered that it is the IMF, aided and abetted by the World Bank deliberately, and, to a lesser extent, by the SL government, unwittingly, you would be absolutely right."
I take exception to the words "deliberately" when referring to World Bank and IMF intervention in Sierra Leone. They were using a tried and tested playbook of Keynesian economics. The fact that it did not work for Sierra Lreone can hardly be described as a deliberate intent to destroy our economy. I doubt thet there is any member country of the board of the IMF or World Bank that is profiting so significantly from Sierra Leone's economic woes that they would employ a deliberate srategy to take us down as it were.
I also take exception to the words, "lesser extent" and "unwittingly" when applied to the Sierra Leone government. They knew exactly how they got into the economic mess they were in. They knew what the conditionalities were for IMF assistance. They tried to avoid facing reality for several years using the borrowing strategies I mentioned earlier. When all failed and we were on the verge of complete economic collapse, they finally agreed to bite the IMF bullet.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 17:26:56 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
KKW, first things first.
in case you missesd it in my earlier reply, here is another chance for you to kindly correct your misunderstanding of what Moh'm wrote. I hope you will do so this time, in order to keep the record accurate:
"You see, KKW, how can you agree with an assertion that Moh'm did NOT make? Let me show what I mean when I say you are letting your errors of fact prevent you from totally agreeing with Moh'm. Let me quote you from Moh'm's article that should have helped you realize the error in your above-quoted statement that Moh'm blames only the IMF for Sierra Leone's problems. In fact, that is a totally false statement on your part (sorry but I have to state the fact). Therefore, when I show you that it is false, I hope you will correct your fundamental mistake. Moh'm never blamed ONLY the IMF. Not at all. If fact, he blamed three entities -- the IMF, the World Bank AND the Sierra Leone governments for creating our country's current economic problems. So, do you see how wrong you are to say, as you did, that Moh'm only blames the IMF?"
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 17:35:17 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
Semantics, my friend, semantics. Okay, point taken, he did not blame "ONLY" the IMF, but as he gives them the lion's share of the blame, this parsing of his conclusions does not necessaily invalidate my comments on the article taken as a whole.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: CHRIS
To: All
Date Posted: 11:49:00 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
KKW, your posting here is sound man. You pretty much covered the entire basis.
In pointing the finger solely at the IMF, is like faulting a bank for giving a credit card with high interest rate to an individual with bad credit. The individual still has the responsibility to use common sense, use the credit wisely, so as not to have more debt than income coming in to meets his financial obligations, including his credit card payment. Simply put.
On that note, if Imports far out weigh exports, then there we go., trade imbalance.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 16:43:10 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
What might have confused you -- and Chris who replied to you agreeing with your mistake without apparently making sure he read and understood what Moh'm wrote -- is that of all three (and to repeat, Moh'm identified three culprits), the IMF bore the greatest responsibility for Sierra Leone's economic problems because it was the one which knowingly instigated a transparently inappropriate policy of devaluation of our country's currency. KKW, please forgive me for repeating this, but saying that the IMF bears the greatest responsibility (what Moh'm actually stated) does NOT equate to saying -- as you said in obvious error -- that the IMF is the only one responsible. Like I said, I hope you would correct your significant mistake. I also hope Chris will correct his undiscerning adoption of your own mistake.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 14:48:03 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Chris, I see you are not impressed with Mom'h's bull he is spewing forth. Your point is correct. When Stevens delinked to spend on the OAU that was the end sensible spending a Salone was concerned. Hence Sam Bangura's demise!
A lot of Momh's supporters are just impressed by his 'book'. In a couple of sentences you and Kamara have put Salone situation it found itself in 1979.As a young country we wanted to spend more than we produce. You then land in the creditors lap.
By the way does Momh know that Britain went cap in hand to the IMF in the 70's.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Kapu Sen se
To: All
Date Posted: 16:26:08 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Did you also have a problem understanding that Chris simply failed to understand Moh'm's writing?
Here, this might help:
"What might have confused you -- and Chris who replied to you agreeing with your mistake without apparently making sure he read and understood what Moh'm wrote -- is that of all three (and to repeat, Moh'm identified three culprits), the IMF bore the greatest responsibility for Sierra Leone's economic problems because it was the one which knowingly instigated a transparently inappropriate policy of devaluation of our country's currency. KKW, please forgive me for repeating this, but saying that the IMF bears the greatest responsibility (what Moh'm actually stated) does NOT equate to saying -- as you said in obvious error -- that the IMF is the only one responsible. Like I said, I hope you would correct your significant mistake. I also hope Chris will correct his undiscerning adoption of your own mistake.Here's what Moh'm actually wrote:
"So, who bears the greatest responsibility for the pathetic paradox of Sierra Leoneans wallowing in abject poverty amidst an abundance of minerals and other natural resources? If you answered that it is the IMF, aided and abetted by the World Bank deliberately, and, to a lesser extent, by the SL government, unwittingly, you would be absolutely right."
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: MR SIERRA LEONE
To: All
Date Posted: 17:00:16 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
My friend, the length and breath of Moh'm article in my opinion indicates that the IMF solely deliberately
With the help the World Bank and a blindfolded corrupt SL govt orchestrated the demise.
Now if you ask again, "So, who bears the greatest responsibility for the pathetic paradox of Sierra Leoneans wallowing in abject poverty amidst an abundance of minerals and other natural resources?
Answer, past corrupt SL governments, deliberately wittingly and unwittingly and,
to a lesser extent, the IMF, and the World Bank.
It is the other way around my friend. We have to take responsibility or else we will not learn from our mistakes.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Not Even Close
To: All
Date Posted: 17:21:02 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
To say that local corruption exceeds the massive ravages that devalaution causes to any nation uunforunate enough to have its currency devaSTATED BY DEVALAUTION IS TO FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THE CATASTROPHIC IMPACT OF DEVALUATION.
Listen to Lord Maynard Keynes, as quoted in Moh'm and his friend's article:
"We believe that the single greatest contributor to SL's economic crisis is the same one as that identified by one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, Lord John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain. In his seminal 1919 treatise, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," Lord Keynes accurately predicted that the destruction of the value of the German currency would precipitate a second world war, because, as he put it: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." For largely similar reasons, we believe SL's economic crisis to be rooted in the debauchery of the country's currency."
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 08:29:22 11/19/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Keynes or Jalloh what nonsense!!! The cause of the 2nd World War was not the devaluation of the German currency,but a weak goverment that was highjacked by Hitler and others.
To end up in the IMF' lap you must have ravaged your economy then go cap in hand to them.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Kapu Sen se
To: All
Date Posted: 16:02:56 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Did you also have a problem understanding that Chris simply failed to understand Moh'm's writing?
Here, this might help:
"What might have confused you -- and Chris who replied to you agreeing with your mistake without apparently making sure he read and understood what Moh'm wrote -- is that of all three (and to repeat, Moh'm identified three culprits), the IMF bore the greatest responsibility for Sierra Leone's economic problems because it was the one which knowingly instigated a transparently inappropriate policy of devaluation of our country's currency. KKW, please forgive me for repeating this, but saying that the IMF bears the greatest responsibility (what Moh'm actually stated) does NOT equate to saying -- as you said in obvious error -- that the IMF is the only one responsible. Like I said, I hope you would correct your significant mistake. I also hope Chris will correct his undiscerning adoption of your own mistake.Here's what Moh'm actually wrote:
"So, who bears the greatest responsibility for the pathetic paradox of Sierra Leoneans wallowing in abject poverty amidst an abundance of minerals and other natural resources? If you answered that it is the IMF, aided and abetted by the World Bank deliberately, and, to a lesser extent, by the SL government, unwittingly, you would be absolutely right."
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: LINKING
To: All
Date Posted: 11:51:54 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
LINK
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: young student
To: All
Date Posted: 10:37:07 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: student@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
I am a young student at Upenn trying to get an MBA. this area is not my speciality but with my love for Sierra Leone I first wanted to say thanks for the education. Although I am a person that still questions that which he is thought and does research on it most of it makes sense. But I woudl try to see if I coudl balance more between work and getting an MBA at Upenn to study more into the matter. I had a question though my brother. why did China devaluing there currency help them though? it helps them to export goods and the US is complaining about that. WHy did not devaluation help us? I think other issues shoudl be taken into account. countries like the us give subsidies to there farmers for example. this gets rid of any competition from foreign countries. I feel apart form them cancelign our debts if all these countries would try to have a level playign field then we woudl compete. if they dont i belive that west africa or africa union having a free trade and one economy woudl help us compete. europe could not compete with us as well until tehy cam etogether. now some asia countries tryign the model too. ALso when i was done my mba i was thinkign about starting a company that gives loans at low interest rates and grants to business people in sierra leone. what do you all think about this? I discussed it with my professors and the company I work for now. But for me I am thinking what woudl be the best method to give out these loans to avoid one side gettign all the benefits. i woudl want people with strong business plan. but i dont want it to only benefit the rich. i have no problem with the rich but i feel those in the cycle of poverty shoudl be helped to move up to or else we woudl continue to have unrests in our countries. just few brainstorming points. all those with constructive critisms and good advice get back with response. also i am a neutral person no party affiliation. woudl that eb hard fo rme. i love american politics but african politics with all violence i would rather help my bros an dsisters back home form private sector neutrally. i know my name woudl not help in such an endeavour but if i have to put a foreiner incharge to make both sides work together i woudl do that.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 11:37:55 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"why did China devaluing there currency help them though? it helps them to export goods and the US is complaining about that. WHy did not devaluation help us? "
Young Student, first of all congratulations on your MBS studies. Education is the key to success and, when combined with sound morals, will produce very patriotic Sierra Leoneans.
Now, to answer your question above, the brief answer is that China's economy is very similar to the typical Western economy, whereas Sierra Leone's economy is very different from the typical Western country's economy. So, China, like the usual Western country has local manufacturing industries that produce goods that foreign countries export into China -- such as cars, medicines, toys, computers, refrigerators, industrial machines, etc. By contrast, Sierra Leone does not have any such local industries. This is a very critical distinction that has a crucial impact on whether devaluation will succeed or not.
My FBC college mate and good friend, Moh'm Jalloh explained this impact-- and why devaluation will succeed in Western countries (and therefore a country like China with a Western-type economy), but would woefully fail in a country like Sierra Leone -- in great detail on Leonenet in 2001 in his article that he posted on that forum before he stopped posting there that same year. I will try to look for it.
Or, if someone has it, perhaps they would be kind enough to post it to help you and other young students like the ones at Albert Academy's Form Six and other schools (in our after-school Syndicate in Freetown in the later 1970s) who used to benefit a lot from Moh'm's writings on devaluation in We Yone.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: young student
To: All
Date Posted: 11:48:08 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngstudent07@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
Thanks for your insight. it was educative. i do feel education shoudl be promoted in salone we need more brian power. but also we need stability, freedom of the press, roads, electricity and a good airport system. i feel if we have those it woudl be easier for some of us in foreign lands to convince them to invest back home. because its alot of people willign to help but they see wars and surpression that scares them away. when i tell them about the poverty side that makes them want to help. we as sierra leoaneans shoudl eb willign to help too.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 11:25:10 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
All very good ideas. I will leave FBC to answer your devaluation question with regards to China. In theory an African union trading bloc MIGHT help our region compete globally but there are two problems. (1) Our economies need to be brought into some kind of harmony (he gaps between rich and poor are too wide)and (2)Unfortunately, Africans are not used to individual sacrifice for the common good. Nuff said.
With regard to low interset loans and grants, you have to study the business model very carefully. Unless this is an entirely philanthropic exercise, your investors need to be confident that they can repatriate their profits from doing business in Sierra Leone, that the country is politically stable, that exchange risk and hyperinflation are under control, and that there is a strong judicial system to pursue and punish potential loan defaulters. We are still several years away from that goal.
Also, what kind of businesses do you want to finance? What people call "business" in Sierra Leone is either importing and selling consumer goods, or lobbying for government contracts. I would argue that neither of these make for good credit risk! What might be more successful is investment in manufacturing or services for the international marketplace. Manufacturing is the Chinese model, Services is the Indian model. I believe Ghana is making some headway pursuing services. We need to study and learn from these successes.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 11:41:49 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngthinker07@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
i belive manufacturing. But even though manufacturing helps countries develop I would not want a model where people work for cents just because its a btter option than not havign a job. sometimes i feel its a shame that these companies go back pay our brothers chicken change and enjoy all the profits here. for instance the miners. i dont knwo hwo these companies make record profits and cannot pay our workers a descent pay. but i feel our countries need to pass stricter labor laws. but that woudl nto be possible unless when they have thes eoau meetings all the foreign leaders agree to pass these laws. because if one country passes the law the companies woudl just leave. i feel we need to start thinkign big an dactign big as sierra leoneans and africans. but woudl such laws pass? i doubt it. they would give money to our presidents or ministers or use other means not to encourage such awareness.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 14:58:43 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
YOUNG THINKER, EDUCATION IS THE KEY!!!!!!!
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 17:03:33 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngthinker07@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
exactly education is the key. we need to encourage these companies to have internship programs too when they come to salone. and try not to based it based on the students politics. we in africa need more education and investment. india at first had the brain power but lakced investment due to their initial anti foregn sentiment. i feel sierra leone we shoudl start a program called a war on illetreracy to make sure that all our youth get an education. and adults without education we shoudl try to get adult classes. even if it be night classes.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 11:18:11 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
All very good ideas. I will leave FBC to answer your devaluation question with regards to China. In theory an African union trading bloc MIGHT help our region compete globally but there are two problems. (1) Our economies need to be brought into some kind of harmony and (2)Unfortunately, Africans are not used to individual sacrifice for the common good.
With regard to low interset loans and grants, you have to study the business model very carefully. Unless this is an entirely philanthropic exercise, your investors need to be confident that they can repstriate their profits from doing business in Sierra Leone, that the country is politically stable, that exchange risk and hyperinflation are under control, and that there is a strong judicial system to pursue and punish potential loan defaulters. We are still some years away from that goal.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Total Picture
To: All
Date Posted: 13:04:57 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: totalpicture@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-24-98-69-54.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 24.98.69.54
Message:
Thank you KKW for some solid economic analysis. I think is missing two
aspects both concerned with SLPMB.
1. What role did the movement away from prison labor in Masanke and
other plantations have on our agricultural output?
2. What effect did Mohm's own role in cohorts with Suma have in
destroying that institution?
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Historian
To: All
Date Posted: 13:20:00 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
To ask "What effect did Mohm's own role in cohorts with Suma have in destroying that institution?" is to display a lack of familiarity with the actual. stellar record of performance that tyhe SLPMB achieved under the leadership of its the late Managing Director, Musa K. Suma.
In case yours is a case of a lack of knowledge -- and not the usual malicious defamation that typifies the idle chatter of comngosah en lie Salone people who know nothing about SLPMB, please read the following factual record of Musa Suma's historically exemplary performance as Managing Director of SLPMB.
The factual and independently verifiable record of SLPMB's operations under Musa Suma set forth below also testifies to the equally superlative role that Moh'm Jalloh played in making SLPMB absolutely the best run company in the entire Sierra Leone between 1978 and 1983, when Musa Suma retired and left SLPMB with the best finances in its history.
Notice that SLPMB did NOT collapse under Musa Suma's management. When SLPMB did collapse from mismanagement and corruption under the NPRC in 1993, that happened fully TEN (10) YEARS after Musa Suma had long retired and left SLPMB with the best finances in SLPMB"s history.
From Awareness Times Newspaper in Freetown
COMMENTARIES
A Tribute to Sierra Leone's Musa Khalil Suma (1942-2007)
By Mohamed A. Jalloh (mohmj@aol.com)
Mar 10, 2007, 13:35
About the author: Mohamed A. Jalloh (pictured below), known to his friends as Moh’m, was head of the Economic Planning Department at SLPMB during most of Mr. Musa K. Suma’s tenure as Managing Director. Mr. Jalloh is currently Managing Director of Bridgedal Capital Management, LLC, a financial services firm based in suburban Washington, D.C. in the USA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On behalf of my family and myself, I would like to extend to Mrs. Ramatu Suma, nee Hassan, the children and grandchildren, Ms. Yeabu Suma, Mr. Momodu Janneh, Jesmed Suma and the rest of the entire family and friends of the late Alhaji Musa Khalil Suma, our heartfelt sympathy upon their grave personal loss.
It is one of the certainties of life on earth that every man or woman who comes into this world must exit it, sooner or later. Yet, no man or woman can know the exact date and time of his or her own exit. Accordingly, those among us who worship God know it to be their sacred duty to do good deeds and follow His teachings. That obligation starts from the first day that we are capable of doing so until that certain, but unknown, time when we take our exit to face Him to account for our deeds on earth.
Sadly, that day has come much too soon for Musa Khalil Suma, former Managing Director of the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB), one of SL’s leading foreign exchange earners during his tenure. At the time he suddenly passed away on Monday, February 26, 2007, Mr. Suma was also the owner and chief executive officer of the privately held Sumatu International, a holding company with subsidiaries in SL, Guinea and the UK. With Alhaji Suma’s untimely death, SL has lost one of its great business minds among the generation of its highly educated sons and daughters which came of age at our country’s independence in 1961. That generation, born in the 1940’s and brought up in a golden age in SL when education was considered among the highest priorities for most families, has now entered its sixth decade of life. For some of them, including the late Mr. Suma, reaching the Biblical landmark of three score and ten years of life on earth would be one of the few goals that would forever remain out of their characteristically ambitious reach.
As the torch of life is passed from our beloved compatriots who have preceded us to the great beyond, to those of us still left to forge our way here on earth, it becomes our solemn duty to eulogize them. And so I shall do for our recently departed father, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, and friend — the late Alhaji Musa Khalil Suma. I do so with humility and praise to God (or Allah, in the Arabic language of Islam), the maker of heaven and earth.
Among the many admirable qualities of the late Musa Suma were his devotion to Islam, his humility, his empathy, and his lifelong commitment to the pursuit of excellence in education and business. In a demonstration of another of his estimable qualities — his legendary generosity — Mr. Suma dedicated himself to a rare goal in SL. That goal was the personal and professional development of others, particularly SL’s promising youth. That is how Musa Suma — the academic over-achiever with multiple graduate degrees in economics who had benefited from the kindness of many S/Leoneans at critical points in his life — generously gave back to the society that had nurtured him from his humble beginnings.
Among the most influential of those benefactors was the late Pa Arthur Williams, a longtime senior teacher at St. Edward’s Secondary School in Freetown. Mr. Williams not only opened his home to a young Musa Suma when the latter traveled to Freetown from Kambia to attend the sixth form at St. Edward’s, but he also daily mentored him. It was Pa Arthur, as the legendary history teacher was known to Mr. Suma and many generations of Old Edwardians (including myself), whom Mr. Suma credited for his introduction to the principles of economics and nationalism.
Musa Suma’s formative experience growing up in the tribally, religiously, and culturally diverse homes in the rural provinces and in the urban capital city of SL laid the foundation for his lifelong practical commitment to the morally uplifting principle of equal opportunity for all S/Leoneans, irrespective of social status, age, sex, tribe, or other ascr1ptive quality.
It is with humility that I acknowledge that I was among a large number of young graduates of Fourah Bay College and Njala University, hailing from every tribe in SL and ranging in age from barely 21 to their early 30’s, who had the privilege of benefiting from the tribe-blind and status-blind disciplined mentoring of one of the most brilliant business minds that SL has ever produced — Alhaji Musa Suma. In return, Mr. Suma reaped the reward of dedicated service from a cadre of young professionals from the time he was promoted Managing Director of SLPMB at the tender age of 35 in 1978 through his retirement five years later. During that time, he transformed SLPMB into one of the best run companies in either the private or public sector in SL.
I had the honor of first meeting the late Mr. Suma at a time when I myself had barely come of age. The meeting occurred at a place to which I was no stranger — the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board. I had worked there as an intern four years earlier while I was still in my mid-teens, during the vacation following the end of my first year at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, SL. The meeting, which occurred about three months after I had started working full time at SLPMB as an Accounting Assistant (the entry level position for college graduates with an economics degree and a specialization in accounting), was a testament to Mr. Suma’s open-door policy to every employee. It ended with the start of what would turn out to be a direct working relationship between us at SLPMB that would end five years later upon Mr. Suma’s retirement as Managing Director and his entry into private business as owner and chief executive officer of Sumatu International.
During our meeting, Mr. Suma observed the first ever trend analysis of SLPMB’s financial results which I had compiled on my own, in addition to performing my regular duties as an accounting assistant. I had embarked upon the project after I had discovered that no such analysis existed at SLPMB. Following the meeting, Mr. Suma referred me to the head of the accounting department (Accounts Manager) for an interview to evaluate my suitability for a promotion. I was interviewed subsequently by a panel comprising SLPMB’s Financial Controller and the Account Manager, and, based upon my performance, I was promoted to the position of Accountant. My first assignment would have been daunting for any recent graduate, even one who had the additional advantage of being the first S/Leonean to ever graduate from Fourah Bay College in its then nearly 150-year history with an honors degree in economics with a major in accounting, as I was privileged to be.
However, it was a testament to Mr. Suma’s uncanny ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the hundreds of employees who worked under his supervision that he instructed that I be assigned to one of the toughest jobs at SLPMB at the time. It was also evidence of two of Mr. Suma’s many other admirable qualities. First, he had an unshakeable commitment to the morally upright principle that neither age nor tribe should be a barrier to any capable S/Leonean’s opportunity to serve his/her country. Second, he was committed to the principle that employees should be rewarded only as a result of their performance. Those twin qualities and many others illustrated in my personal story and that of many others who were fortunate to have worked with Mr. Suma represent the secrets of his phenomenal success as the most accomplished managing director of the largest parastatal in SL at the time — SLPMB. Musa Suma’s stellar accomplishment was made even more remarkable by the fact that he was the youngest person ever appointed managing director in SLPMB’s 47-year history.
And that was how I, a S/Leonean from the Fula tribe who had not met Mr. Suma (a S/Leonean from the Susu tribe) before I started working at SLPMB in 1978, came to be assigned to the challenging job of heading the accounting department at the SL Palm Kernel Oil Mill (SLPKOM) in early 1979. The mill was a subsidiary of SLPMB that manufactured palm kernel oil and cake from palm kernels for export to Europe. A few months earlier, Mr. Suma had demonstrated his characteristic commitment to nationalism by successfully prevailing upon the APC government of President Siaka Stevens not to renew the management contract for SLPKOM with a British company. At the time, that company was being paid a huge amount of scarce foreign exchange by the SL government to manage the operations of SLPKOM, which was making losses.
In the wake of the government’s decision, Mr. Suma assembled a team that included other young S/Leoneans. Significantly, most of them were Fourah Bay College graduates in their twenties and early thirties, who belonged to many different tribes, from Aku to Creole to Mende and Themne. It was this team, led by Mr. Suma, which took over from the expatriate management of SLPKOM in 1979, and managed the company’s accounting, engineering, human resources, manufacturing, marketing, security and other corporate functions. Remarkably, within 18 months, the SLPMB management team had successfully turned around the erthswhile money-losing operations of SLPKOM under its expatriate management to a profitable business managed entirely by young S/Leoneans.
As Mr. Suma promoted members of our class of proven FBC graduates to top management positions in SLPMB during the succeeding years, his commitment to developing promising young Sierra Leonean graduates only increased. This coincided with SLPMB’s emergence as the premier choice for employment for many young college graduates in SL during the early 1980’s. It gave me great satisfaction to play a leading role in recruiting the most qualified graduates from the economics and accounting departments of FBC to what was then much-sought employment at SLPMB.
The attraction of SLPMB as a magnet for S/Leoneans seeking a fair reward for their skills was not an accident. It represented a deliberate policy by Mr. Suma to introduce financial, human resource, marketing, and other corporate policies which were designed to promote reasonable profitability in the operations of SLPMB, while promoting accountability to the SL government. Thereby, Mr. Suma guaranteed accountability for SLPMB’s activities to the ultimate owners of SLPMB — the people of SL. Indeed, during his tenure as managing director, SLPMB recorded the highest profit in its history even though it was paying the highest proportion of the world market price of its cocoa and coffee exports to SL’s farmers. In order to appreciate the phenomenal strides made by SLPMB under the direction of Musa Suma as its managing director, it is necessary to take a look at SLPMB before and after Mr., Suma’s tenure. So as to keep this tribute to a reasonable length, only the most significant of Mr. Suma’s numerous accomplishments will be noted.
In 1973, when a young S/Leonean economist working at the Ministry of Finance, Musa Khalil Suma, was appointed deputy managing director of one of SL’s largest foreign exchange earners, SLPMB, at the age of 30, he arrived at SLPMB to find many unwelcome surprises in SLPMB’s management and in its accounting, marketing, purchasing, and security operations, viz.
More than a decade after SL had obtained its independence from Great Britain in 1961, SL’s largest foreign exchange earner from its agricultural produce, SLPMB, was still being run by a British citizen as its managing director. Mr. Suma also discovered that, upon his appointment as deputy managing director, he became only the second college graduate among the several hundred SLPMB employees. Moreover, he was the only SLPMB employee with a degree in economics. Needless to say, he was also the only one with a graduate degree.
The new, young deputy managing director also found unwelcome surprises in SLPMB’s accounting operations. SLPMB did not have an adequate system of internal control for verifying the purchases from farmers of palm kernels, cocoa, coffee, and ginger that were received at SLPMB’s headquarters at Cline Town in Freetown for export. Accordingly, there was inadequate assurance that payments made by SLPMB were being made for produce that had actually been received into SLPMB’s stores. The probability for fraud was extremely high under such inadequate systems of internal financial controls. Indeed, six years earlier, the Beoku Betts commission of enquiry had actually found massive fraud involving produce allegedly bought and exported by SLPMB that it found to have been perpetrated by SLPMB officials in collusion with officials at SLPMB’s supervising ministry, the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Yet another problem identified by Mr. Suma in the system for buying produce was one that cost both the SLPMB and small farmers dearly. It involved the inadequate service provided by the private buying agents who bought produce from small farmers and sold it to SLPMB. Where these small farmers produced only a small crop or farmed at great distance from the major roads, their produce proved unattractive to buying agents. The ability of these farmers to sell their crop to SLPMB was therefore limited. Both they and SLPMB lost revenue as a result of their failure to deliver any of their produce to SLPMB.
In addition, Mr. Suma discovered that SLPMB did not have an adequate system for evaluating and monitoring the purchases of non-agricultural items such as office supplies, fuel, etc., that were required to run the vast operations of the company. Again, this inadequacy raised the probability of malfeasance in the purchasing activities of the company.
Yet, to his greatest surprise, the newly-appointed deputy managing director soon found out that he was relatively powerless to make the urgently-needed changes required to correct the anomalies he had discovered. This was because, having been recruited from outside SLPMB, he was perceived as an outsider by the rest of the management of SLPMB throughout his five-year tenure as deputy managing director. He was therefore kept away from the key levers of power within SLPMB’s management. Accordingly, it was only upon his promotion to managing director that he had the first real opportunity to make the sorely-needed changes.
In response to the inadequacy of the internal controls over SLPMB’s purchases of palm kernels, coffee, cocoa, and ginger, Mr. Suma took several corrective steps. They included the installation of a brand new weighbridge that recorded the independently verifiable weight of any and every lorry delivering produce to SLPMB’s stores in Freetown, both on their way in and out of SLPMB’s stores. This made it easier to verify the actual weight of produce purchased by SLPMB. In addition, a comprehensive payment system was installed in which payment was made by SLPMB only upon the presentation of authenticated weighbridge tickets, consonant warehouse receipts and independent verification by SLPMB’s Internal Audit department.
Moreover, a check could be issued only with two signatories, one from either the managing director or the deputy managing director, on the one hand, and the other from the Accounts Manager or another designated manager within SLPMB’s finance departments. This eliminated the possibility of fraud in SLPMB’s management absent collusion between the Managing Director or Deputy Managing Director, on the one hand, and the Accounts Manager or his or her alternate, on the other. Even then, the annual external audit conducted by the international firm of Peat Marwick & Co. would uncover any such malfeasance, if it had not been discovered by SLPMB’s internal auditors, unless the external auditors were themselves complicit and/or incompetent.
As regards similar problems of inadequate internal control affecting non-produce purchases, the new managing director also installed a comprehensive system for evaluating and monitoring all such purchases made by SLPMB. This involved strict adherence to budgeted limits and post-expenditure evaluation. That included variance analysis which identified any variation between the budgeted amounts and the expended amounts, for corrective action.
In order to resolve the other operations problems of SLPMB he had inherited, including an aging and inadequate fleet of lorries to transport produce from SLPMB’s stores in the eastern, southern and northern provinces to Freetown, Mr. Suma replaced SLPMB’s aging fleet of lorries with 23 brand new Mercedes Benz lorries. To address the need to reduce the down time resulting from routine service and repair work on SLPMB’s large fleet of vehicles, including light vehicles, while increasing the transparency thereof, Mr. Suma built an in-house garage for the servicing of all of SLPMB vehicles. Furthermore, in a specific effort to extend the reach of SLPMB’s purchasing activities to meet the previously neglected needs of small farmers in remote areas of SL, Mr. Suma also created a subsidiary of SLPMB called National Produce Company (NAPCO). NAPCO’s field employees were assigned the task of traveling to remote villages to make sure that every farmer who wanted to sell his/her produce to SLPMB would be afforded a timely opportunity to do so at the applicable published producer prices paid to all farmers.
SLPMB’s operations expanded greatly during Mr. Suma’s tenure. This was due to two main factors. One was the result of the company’s improved operations. The other was the addition of rice distribution to the company’s traditional export activities, after the government’s Rice Corporation collapsed in 1979. As a result, a need arose to expand SLPMB’s storage capacity, office space, and skilled management and mid-level staff. At the same time, Mr. Suma recognized that it was important to compensate adequately not just the farmers who produced the crops SLPMB purchased, but also the staff who facilitated the collection, storage, preparation and export of those crops. Accordingly, Mr. Suma introduced several initiatives to boost staff morale.
Mr. Suma characteristically responded decisively to all the above concerns. He embarked on a storage expansion program during which he built eighteen (18) huge stores throughout SL. Addressing mainly the need to store rice which SLPMB was importing at the rate of roughly 10,000 tons a month during his entire tenure, Mr. Suma constructed rice stores in the populous rice consumption Western Area: Two at Jui, three at Wellington, two at Kennedy Street, and seven at Kissy Dockyard. To boost the storage of mainly coffee, cocoa, palm kernels and ginger, Mr. Suma built additional stores in the eastern and southern provinces — two each in the respective provincial centers of Kenema and Bo.
In regard to the acute shortage of office space amidst SLPMB’s expanding operations, Mr. Suma completely refurbished and modernized the small headquarters building SLPMB had occupied at Cline Town in Freetown since the 1960s. He also built new office buildings at SLPMB’s head office to accommodate the expanding shipping and personnel departments. He replaced the single Toyota minibus that could transport only a minute fraction of the several hundred SLPMB employees with two identical brand new tour-size buses. In a testament to his belief in equal opportunity for all employees, Mr. Suma allocated one bus each to blue-collar workers, including SLPMB’s laborers, and to SLPMB’s white collar workers. He extended the same concept to SLPMB’s staff housing loan program. In any given year that such loans were granted, Mr. Suma required that housing loan recipients included representatives from every level of SLPMB employees, from laborers to management staff.
In response to SLPMB’s staff association’s request, Mr. Suma also built a small mosque for use by SLPMB’s largely Moslem employees to reduce the length of excused absences for prayers. For similar reasons, he constructed a staff canteen that served all of SLPMB’s employees who wished to pay for lunch there. He also established two health clinics for SLPMB employees — one at SLPMB’s headquarters and another at SLPKOM.
Finally, Mr. Suma embarked on a successful drive to recruit some of the brightest S/Leoneans in order to meet SLPMB’s expanding need for competent executives and mid-level managers. As a result, by the time he retired from SLPMB in 1983, all but one of the fifteen members of SLPMB’s management were S/Leoneans with college degrees — a far cry from the period five years earlier when he found only one other college graduate in SLPMB’s management. In another contrast from the period when Mr. Suma first arrived at SLPMB, it was commonplace to find many college graduates among SLPMB’s several hundred employees. Not surprisingly, the result of all the pioneering policies introduced by Mr. Suma at SLPMB was that SLPMB achieved unprecedented success in its operations.
The evidence that Musa Khalil Suma, the youngest person ever appointed managing director of SLPMB, was also its best managing director, is overwhelming.
In 1981, SLPMB recorded the highest profit in its history, while paying the highest proportion of the world market price of produce to SL’s cash crop farmers. It was a feat that was never equaled. It will remain unequalled, due to the fact that SLPMB collapsed in 1992 — nearly ten years after Mr. Suma had left SLPMB with the most solid balance sheet in its history. This fact was attested to by the financial statements audited upon his retirement in 1983 by the same firm of independent external auditors which had regularly audited SLPMB’s financial statements each and every year during Mr. Suma’s tenure as managing director — the internationally renowned auditing firm of Peat Marwick & Co.
In addition, during Mr. Suma’s tenure, other parastatals and government agencies, notably the Bank of SL, regularly visited SLPMB to study ways of adapting SLPMB’s comprehensive financial, personnel and staff welfare policies to improve their own operations.
The wide-ranging and significant improvements installed at SLPMB by Mr. Suma during his tenure as managing director, some of which are outlined above, represented the last such initiatives installed at SLPMB until its demise nearly a decade later.
If there is a surfeit of evidence that Mr. Suma’s tenure as managing director coincided with the most successful period in SLPMB’s history, so also is there evidence that SLPMB, under Mr. Suma’s tenure, became one of the best run companies in both the private and public sectors of SL, as noted above.
The untimely death of this very accomplished son of Kambia district leaves forever unanswered a tantalizing question, namely: Could Musa Khalil Suma have transformed our inefficiently-run country in the same manner that he had transformed an inefficiently-run SLPMB into the best run company it had ever been?
About the author: Mohamed A. Jalloh(pictured above), known to his friends as Moh’m, was head of the Economic Planning Department at SLPMB during most of Mr. Musa K. Suma’s tenure as Managing Director. Mr. Jalloh is currently Managing Director of Bridgedal Capital Management, LLC, a financial services firm based in suburban Washington, D.C. in the USA.
© Copyright 2005, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Complete Picture
To: All
Date Posted: 14:09:19 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: completepicture@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-24-98-69-54.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 24.98.69.54
Message:
Very Interesting tribute of an obvious visionary and acheiver from his
mentee. There is a telling paragraph in it though:
"This eliminated the possibility of fraud in SLPMB’s management
absent collusion between the Managing Director or Deputy Managing
Director, on the one hand, and the Accounts Manager or his or her
alternate, on the other. Even then, the annual external audit conducted
by the international firm of Peat Marwick & Co. would uncover any such
malfeasance, if it had not been discovered by SLPMB’s internal
auditors, unless the external auditors were themselves complicit
and/or incompetent."
knowledgable sources have it that just such collusion took place
between said Managing Director and one Mohamed Jalloh to comit
"responsible" fraud. One that would hold payments in foreign accounts,
remit the principal before the audit and keep the interest. The
principal sums that we are talking about were in the hundreds of
millions of dollars and netted said individuals in the tens of millions.
The actions were eventually caught by auditors but too subtle for the
cabal of vultures in power at the time to view as fraud. After all SLPMB
lost nothing. En da sai usai dem tie cow...... It however set a
precedence of using the company money for personal benefit and
setting it on its slipery slope to destruction. The record of Suma's
business brilliance got tainted by actions that are pretty benign by our
historical standards.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Lawyer
To: All
Date Posted: 14:25:21 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"knowledgable sources have it that just such collusion took place between said Managing Director and one Mohamed Jalloh to comit "responsible" fraud."
Please show us your evidence.
Caution: There are severe penalities in civilized countries for character assasination and other acts of defamation. You foolishly assume that your true identity will not be discovered because you use a false name ay your own risk.
Remember, the USA is not Salone where you and your ilk get away with careless talk. You defame someone and when he opbtains a judgmen t against you he can take your wages, your car, yopur house -- and if that does not satisfy a multi-million daollar judgment against you, you will foreover be working to turn over tyour minium wage pay to him until you die.
And then he can collect against your estate, including your wife's joint property, etc. So, do not say you were not warned. Remember: This is not lawless Salone.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: young thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 11:26:32 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: youngthinker07@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
yes I was thinking about it. because they have programs at these universities where they could help you do something like that. most of the students seem to go to south america developing countries. when we discuss things in lecture they say its safer there. so inorder for me to convince them to take such endeavours in salone its gonna be a hard task. but from my end i would continue to network not only to better myself but to better salone.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Fool me Once, But Fool Me Twice?
To: All
Date Posted: 08:44:48 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
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i FOUND MR. JALLOH'S 2005 article in awareness times.
From Awareness Times Newspaper in Freetown
COMMENTARIES
How the IMF Fooled the Sierra Leone Government into Impoverishing Sierra Leone
By Mohamed A. Jalloh (USA)
Nov 24, 2005, 18:19
In the early 1970s, a Sierra Leonean who wanted one U.S. dollar needed less than one Leone in Sierra Leone currency to obtain it. To be exact, she would need only eighty Sierra Leone cents. Today, that same Sierra Leonean would need more than Le 3,000 if she wanted to obtain the same $1. How did this happen?
Did SL suddenly stop exporting diamonds, bauxite, coffee, cocoa, or shrimp, to cause its currency to drop in value against the dollar by a staggering three hundred and seventy five THOUSAND percent over the past 35 years? Or, did the USA suddenly become the world’s number one exporting country, and thereby help propel the dollar to its current stratospheric level of strength against the Leone? The answer to both questions is the same: No. On the contrary, SL has continued to export more or less the same quantity of mineral and agricultural commodities, although at lower prices than before. However, during the same period, the USA has become the biggest debtor nation in the world, setting records for its external trade deficits and its domestic budget deficits.
Which begs the question: Why would a country like SL, with exports which have not collapsed, see its currency drop in value by 375,000 per cent against another country such as the USA, which exports less goods and services, compared to its imports, than any other country in the world? The answer is as unsurprising as it is simple: The USA controls the IMF, while the IMF controls Sierra Leone.
And that explains how the SL government became the errand boy of the IMF in the latter’s wildly successful scheme that has now made every man, woman, and child in SL 375,000 times poorer than their counterparts in America. So, what, you might ask, is the name of that scheme? The answer: Devaluation, the crown jewel of the IMF’s foreign “aid” package for developing countries. According to the IMF, devaluation – a potent cure in Western and other developed countries for imbalances between a country’s exports and its imports -- is the cure for any and all economic problems of each and every country in Africa.
However, the plain truth is that, far from being a cure, devaluation in SL, and in similar African countries, is quite simply, a meticulously disguised catastrophic daylight robbery, of gigantic proportions, of an unwitting nation by opportunistic foreigners. The following analogy should make this plain.
Let us assume that two next door neighbors, JonBull and Dumbeh, produced bread and diamonds respectively for a living. Dumbeh lived in a tropical climate; JonBull lived in a temperate climate. Dumbeh produced 500 carats of diamonds a year. JonBull produced 500 loaves of bread a year. For as long as they could remember, both neighbors traded with each other: JonBull gave Dumbeh one loaf of bread in exchange for one carat of Dumbeh’s diamonds. Everyone agreed that this was an equitable arrangement.
All this changed suddenly one day when a certain dubious relative of JonBull's showed up uninvited at his doorstep and demanded that he be made a partner in JonBull's enterprise so that he could sell his own wares in association with JonBull's brand name. Being a man of God, JonBull easily recognized a non-believer, even before his uninvited guest loudly announced that the name God was no more significant to him than those in Greek mythology, such as "Zeus," etc. We shall call JonBull's crasher DeeCee, for reasons which should soon become clear. DeeCee manufactured winter coats made of fur for a living.
Soon, DeeCee was running JonBull's business. The next time Dumbeh wanted bread, he came to JonBull's house. That was how he came face to face with DeeCee for the first time. The latter assured Dumbeh that he had obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, and Milton Friedman, the renowned monetary economist, had been his mentor there. Dumbeh, not being an economist himself, was thoroughly impressed with this man of vaunted letters whose gods included only the mortals Friedman and other monetarists, none of whom came from Dumbeh's neighborhood.
Then, Dumbeh proffered his one carat of diamonds and stretched out his hand for his usual loaf of bread in return. That was when a strange thing happened: DeeCee took out a knife (Dumbeh didn't bolt for his life only because he was not yet aware that DeeCee didn't believe in God)! DeeCee took the knife and cut the loaf of bread into ten slices. He then offered Dumbeh one of those slices in exchange for his one carat of diamonds.
Being a smart guy, Dumbeh pointed out that he had not received the entire loaf of bread, as he always had, at least when he dealt directly and exclusively with JonBull. To which DeeCee replied: “This is the dawn of a new era that will make you more prosperous than you've ever dreamed of.” Beaming with the false camaraderie of the practiced conman that he was, DeeCee startled Dumbeh by wrapping his arm around his shoulder and walking him to JonBull's back room which he had usurped as a store for his winter fur coats.
He then pointed out one of his shiny winter coats and told Dumbeh: "You will need this winter coat soon, even though you don't know it yet from the 100 degree tropical temperatures here. But trust me, as a Ph.D., I swear to you that you will need that winter coat soon. Just to show you how confident I am of my prediction, I will sell it to you on credit for 100 carats of your diamonds and you don't have to start paying me back until after 20 years. How's that for fairness?"
By now, Dumbeh was almost sold on DeeCee's pitch. He thought to himself: Well, he's the only one in town with a Ph.D. from the mighty USA! And he studied with Milton Friedman, who knows money! Wow! And what if I do end up needing that winter coat in these tropics as he has already assured me? Then I would have to buy one in a hurry, but here is this good man, willing to do me a favor by offering to give it to me now, and I don't have to pay for it with 100 carats of my diamonds until 20 years! And even then, I don't have to pay the full amount, but I could pay it off in installments!
Dumbeh was just about ready to say to DeeCee, who was now beaming from ear to ear in the confident anticipation born of years of experience conning God-fearing people, "I'll take it!"
But DeeCee still held back the shiny winter coat and said: "Well, now, Dumbeh, if you want this coat and you don't want to pay for it until twenty years hence, then you can only get it if you agree to take one of the ten slices of bread, instead of the whole loaf, every time you sell one carat of your diamonds to JonBull. And you must agree to do so not just for today, but for any and every time you trade with JonBull!
Dumbeh, still focusing on the free credit that would come with the not-yet-needed winter coat that might only be needed in the future, gladly agreed! But DeeCee was not yet finished taking Dumbeh to the cleaners! Still holding back the winter coat as Dumbeh longingly gazed at it, he made a final request of Dumbeh: Would he agree to announce to his entire family that with immediate effect, not only Dumbeh, but anyone who wanted to exchange Dumbeh's diamonds for JonBull's bread would receive NOT a loaf of bread as before, but only one slice out of ten slices of the whole loaf.
Dumbeh looked at DeeCee in bemusement. Didn't this man say he had a Ph.D.? Why then would he ask him to announce to his family what he -- the head of the family -- had already agreed to do between the two of them? DeeCee, of course was thinking: As soon as he announces that he agrees that his diamond is now worth only one-tenth of a loaf of JonBull's bread, not just him, but his entire family would have to abide by his agreement. Yippee! Another one bites the dust!
Dumbeh shouted: "I agree!" Immediately, DeeCee, masking his glee with the ease that comes naturally to a born fraud, declared: "Great! Now, sign this devaluation agreement and then make the announcement to your household members. Tell them that, from this moment hence, you have now devalued your household diamonds vis-ŕ-vis JonBull's household's bread."
And so it came to pass that, by a mere announcement, induced by the opportunistic promise to sell to Dumbeh on credit an entirely unnecessary winter coat that he most certainly would never use in his tropical homeland, Dumbeh agreed to DeeCee's deceptive offer, namely: That he (Dumbeh) agree to accept DeeCee's self-serving and entirely unsubstantiated opinion that Dumbeh's diamonds be considered to be worth only one-tenth of their previous value in relation to JonBull's loaves of bread. (Meticulously disguised daylight robbery).
And that is how it also came to pass that Dumbeh's household went from giving JonBull only one carat of diamonds every time they wanted a loaf of bread from JonBull, to giving JonBull ten carats of diamonds, while JonBull only then gave them the same one loaf that he had been giving them before in exchange for one carat of diamonds! (Daylight robbery of a nation comprising Dumbeh's household).
That, in turn, is how Dumbeh's household, which produced only 500 carats of diamonds a year went from eating 500 loaves of bread a year (1 loaf for one carat) to eating ten times less after the devaluation, i.e., 50 loaves of bread a year (1 loaf for 10 carats). In other words, Dumbeh's household went from eating just about one loaf of bread EVERYDAY before the devaluation to truly starving on less than one loaf every SEVEN days, because of the devaluation! (Catastrophic national impact of daylight robbery).
Should Dumbeh want to save his family from imminent starvation, he could sell the winter coat to JonBull for bread. However, because the coat was now used, JonBull would properly ask that he buy it for less than Dumbeh had bought it from DeeCee. But, with JonBull, unlike DeeCee, being a God-fearing person, let us assume he agreed to pay the same price that Dumbeh had paid. Would Dumbeh receive 100 loaves of bread for his 100 carat winter coat? Not at all! Not after the devaluation! Remember that, after the devaluation, any and every carat of Dumbeh’s diamonds were now worth only one-tenth of their pre-devaluation value! Therefore, in exchange for his 100 carat winter coat, Dumbeh receives NOT 100 loaves of bread, but a measly 10 loaves for his pitiful and likely soon-to-be-dead starving family to fight over! (Catastrophic national impact of daylight robbery).
But that is not the end of the windfall for JonBull's household, thanks to devaluation! This is because, now, Dumbeh's household would owe DeeCee not 100 carats of diamonds that they had started out owing him 20 years earlier when DeeCee foisted the unnecessary winter coat on Dumbeh, but ten times more, i.e., 1000 carats, 20 years later, not including interest! (Opportunistic and meticulously disguised gargantuan daylight robbery perpetrated on an entire nation led by an unwitting government by the unacknowledged collaborator of a foreign trading partner).
And that is how, through his kinship with the dubious DeeCee, JonBull's household came to siphon at least 450 carats of diamonds a year from Dumbeh's household, while at the same time dooming Dumbeh's household to almost certain death through the starvation diet that had forced upon them by the devaluation. That diet consisted of one loaf of bread every seven days for the entire Dumbeh household instead of one loaf of bread everyday before the devaluation.
In addition, thanks to the devaluation, 900 carats of Dumbeh's diamonds (the devaluation-enhanced difference in the repayment of the original cost of 100 carats for the fur coat after 20 years, not counting interest) would be siphoned off to the coffers of JonBull's household! Not to mention the transfer to JonBull of an additional 900 carats of Dumbeh's diamonds if Dumbeh, wishing to save his starving household from certain death, resells the same fur coat. That would end up costing him an additional 900 carats when he repays DeeCee!
And since Dumbeh produced only 500 carats of diamonds a year, that is how Dumbeh came to owe a debt that would require him to entirely forgo food (bread) for two straight years before he could pay off only the principal on his debt of 1000 carats of diamonds for DeeCee's unnecessary fur coat after 20 years!. Should Dumbeh still be alive then, he would then start paying interest also (to desegregate and simplify the example). (Catastrophic robbery of a nation).
Of course, not surprisingly, Dumbeh's, and his entire family's, trip to the cleaners was surreptitiously engineered by the self-serving and meticulously concealed scheming of a fur coat hawker -- the self-proclaimed unbeliever in God, DeeCee – who opportunistically turned his own personal misfortune in having set up shop in the steamy heat of Dumbeh's tropical homeland, into a personal misfortune not just for Dumbeh, but for his entire household! Thereby, the self-admitted Godless DeeCee shamelessly and callously profited from his tall tale of an impending calamity facing the gullible Dumbeh and his hapless household (needing a fur coat in the tropics) that was highly unlikely to happen.
Did anything change in the relative characteristics between Dumbeh and JonBull's diamonds and bread respectively before the former agreed to succumb to DeeCee's self-serving ploy to unilaterally and fraudulently devalue Dumbeh's diamonds? Not at all! Yet, there was Dumbeh, agreeing to "devalue" his diamonds in relation to JonBull's bread! In the aftermath, Dumbeh and his household suffered entirely predictable and almost irreversible economic, social and political catastrophes!
How is the above story analogous to devaluation in SL? Substitute the following for the characters, items, and places in the above story: Dumbeh is the government of SL. Dumbeh's household is comprised of the citizens of SL. DeeCee is the IMF; DeeCee's fur coats in tropical SL are the ubiquitous IMF so-called structural adjustment loans and their similar antecedents and successors. JonBull is a western country trading with SL.
In summary, that is how devaluation is -- and facilitates -- daylight robbery involving the wholesale transfer of a poor nation's resources to the undeserving coffers of a foreign trade partner and its institutional collaborators.
It is also how devaluation, as I have long and consistently maintained (in public speeches and in the published media, since 1979), is, and involves, the imposition of harrowing physical and mental hardship on the devaluing country's hapless citizens. Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of the devaluation (foreign countries and the IMF) enjoy a predictable and significant windfall in the form of newfound wealth entirely derived from a transfer of the poor, suffering country's wealth to that of the non-devaluing country's undeserving coffers!
A final sobering caveat that should leave no doubt about the pervasive and perverse nature of devaluation and its catastrophic impact on the daily life of each and every Sierra Leonean in SL:
The example above assumed a devaluation of less than 1000 per cent (precisely 900% --from parity to 1 loaf of bread = 10 carats of diamonds). By contrast, the actual devaluation in SL, since 1973, when the exchange rate was Le 1 = $1.25, to now, when the exchange rate is $1 = Le 3000, is a stratospheric 375,000%. Let me repeat that: Three hundred and seventy-five THOUSAND percent.
Is it any wonder, then, that Sierra Leoneans are the poorest people on earth? Or that the IMF, aided and abetted by a succession of clueless governments in SL over the past 35 years, is the culprit most responsible for our people’s longstanding poverty?
© Mohamed A. Jalloh
Editor’s Note: Moh’m Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean living in Maryland, USA, whose views on economics and finance have been widely-published in the U.S. and the U.K., first advised the SL government against devaluing our country’s currency in an article entitled: “Devaluation: A Rich Man’s Cure,” published in Freetown in the We Yone newspaper in 1979.
© Copyright 2005, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 06:37:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
I made a mistake in the last but one paragraph by writing WHY instead of of HOW. The correct sentence should read "I received the above explanation from Moh'm Jalloh himself in 2005 after I read his article in Awareness Times where he explained in great detail HOW the IMF's devaluation destroyed the economy of Sierra Leone and made paupers of previously middle-class Sierra Leoneans. ("How the IMF Fooled the SL Government Into Impoverishing Sierra Leone). After reading it, I had wanted to know from Moh'm WHY the IMF would defraud the SL government."
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 06:36:52 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Voodoo economics to me!
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Liko
To: All
Date Posted: 07:14:09 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 204.84.81.88
Message:
I am becoming increasingly interested in the ongoing debate on a volatile topic like the Sierra Leone exchange rate. There have been so many schools of thoughts for and against Mohamed Jalloh that I may decide to write a research paper on this volatile topic: 'The Exchange Rate and Inflationary Trend in Sierra Leone: A Comparative Analysis'.
Much of the research, if undertaken, will look at the topic from an econometric view point with a clear macro conclusion.
I hopefully intend publishing the result which will include peer reviews.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Patriot
To: All
Date Posted: 07:35:13 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Liko, that's the spirit. Let us as siera leoneans contribute positively to the search for a solution to our country's problems. I hope you undertake nthe research. Who knows, you could even submit if for a Ph.D disseration.
Yours is the kindn of reply we should see on this forum. Like Kabs' brother, Max Kanu said, there should be no place here for ignorant people who just want to drag all sierra leoneans down to their sorry level.
That is why I was so happy to read the sober exchange between KKW and FBC. I have finally understood what Mohamed Jalloh's friends like FBC have known all along. The guy is simply the best analyst on Sierra leone's economy i have read here on this subject of devaluation. So, to KKW and FBC, and now, you, Liko, let me say thank you for shoing that not all Sierra leoneans are ignorant and destructive of other sierra leoneans.
In look forward to KKW's reply to FBC, just like I look forward to reading your research if you do it.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Liko
To: All
Date Posted: 07:55:14 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 204.84.81.88
Message:
Thanks Patriot. Indeed, I would have loved to see some of the objectionists put forward their alternative theories in a succinct manner instead of using purely offensive languages because they disagree with one's point of view.
This should be an intellectual exercise. Display your alternative theory if you disagree with mine. This is what I refer to as the 'spirit'
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 15:05:20 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib234.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.77
Message:
Greetings my brothers and sisters. Let me applaud your efforts and interest in discussing Sierra Leone's problems. Such comes from great love and a desire for solution. However, I must remind us that the problems are still prevalent in Sierra Leone because the solution has not been quite identified. Though I fervently agree that a problem cannot be solved if it is not identified yet, it can also not be solved by naming the problems and not looking for the solution/s.
Mr. Mohamed A. Jalloh, since 1979 has eye-marked these problems and we should all agree that most of what he came-up with have been viewed by many Sierra Leoneans and counterparts as the causative agents for Sierra Leone's economic woes. Whether he pointed fingers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the sole enemies of our economic disintegration or not, as people who are motivated in seeing a reverse of our situation, I would hope, we should be looking at the area/s he has named, to figure-out how in fact, they are responsible for our problems, what alternatives or amelioration there is/are to solving these problems? Then we proceed to looking into factors that gave rise to their success in bringing our socioeconomic down-turn from where it use to be to where it is now. If in fact, this is not the only problem, what are the other problems but most importantly, what are the solutions?
Let us look at it this way: a doctor who looks at a patient without diagnoses and proclaims such a patient sick, might be right but does that doctor wish to treat the patient?
How about the situation where the doctor sits and talks about how sick the patient is without prescribing medication and or treatment of such a patient; how can the sickness in such a patient be treated?
In my view, we are the doctor who knows that the patient is sick without diagnoses and will not prescribe treatment for him but talk about the patients sickness. Most intelligent people would see such an act as a way of self-gratification. In other words, we are just blowing hot-air to satisfy our selves, which is of no value to the patient, family and friends. Talking about it will not make the patient well, will not increase our humanity nor will it make us proficient in our fields. The likely hood for such a patient to be well without going to another professional doctor is slim.
Let us discuss what solutions we think might resolve the problems that Mr. Mohamed A. Jalloh has diagnosed since 1979.
For example, the IMF could not have gone to Sierra Leone and impose on us to take debts if they did not see the need. They saw that our economy was in bad shape, our productivity was not at per with markets that were doing well, internationally, our infrastructure was not up to standards whereby, they could yield productivity that could have created the avenue for us to compete because our exchange rate could have been stronger. Above all, our people were suffering. As such, there was the need to devalue our economy in that our Gross Domestic Productivity did not meet the international market value.
Why was this the case?
Instability was one of the reasons for the problems in Sierra Leone, Africa and other Third World Countries.
Let us restrict ourselves to Sierra Leone. Immediately after the attainment of independence in 1961 we broiled into political struggles between and amongst the S.L.P.P. and between the various parties that existed during the time. When in 1967 Siaka Stevens and the A.P.C. won elections there was a coup-de-tat that deposed him, resulting in successive coup-de-tats. After Siaka Stevens attained power, mistrust had been created that resulted in the mistrust that up to the last elections that saw President Koroma into power was still prevalent. This created a euphoria that rather than help in the organisation and cohesion of the country, kept our leaders on their toes to retain and maintain their positions because of the fear that such power might be grabbed from them. In which case, crooked people as they will always be, started corruption that engulfed the entire country.
These are some of the causative agents for our problems. How to solve them should be our focus at this point.
In giving some of the solutions, I would suggest that the United Nations (U.N.,) the African Union (A.U.) the Economic Committee of West African States (ECOWAS,) and Sierra Leone or Africa must devise a paper within the chaters these organizations and the various constitutions of nation-states that would disallow coup plotters from ascending to power and joining their ranks. Thereby, changing the charter that prescribed coup-de-tatas for the removal of dictatorial regimes to emphasizing a policy that would enhance pure democratic practices in West African Sub-regions if not Africa at large. This would diminish dictatorships and ensure thorough democratic practices. Not only that, it will give leaders a security to rule without a fear of being deposed that sometimes give rise to the many embezzlement's that have taken place in our countries because leaders are unsure of their future, their lives and leadership. It will further give the populace a voice that will be heard by the leaders, knowing that the latter can be deposed by the use of the ballot rather than the barrel of the gun. The absence of this voice has made the leaders unanswerable to the people because rather fearing their voices, the leaders fear the guns. As such, democracy becomes theatrical display of timid elegance.
The above euphoria has created a vacuum for justice, this justice, only which can ensure a smooth running of a nation and see development take place has been a joke, which in turn has emboldened corrupt people to do as they will, fearless of any repremand.
When there is justice there will be organization. When there is organisation, we will see an orderly conduct that will yield the results we so desire. When people know that they can be answerable to the law, they will do what is right. But the lack of this has created the need for the IMF to come in because the leaders have been corrupt as such our economy fell backwards.
I would hope that we will be solution-oriented than entertaining ourselves with recycling debates of a problem or problems we have consented their existence. We do not wish to be a truck stucked in a mud that keeps riddling on and on and on and on. Until we put grabble, a stick we will all remain in the same place until find ways to move such a vehicle.
Well I thank you.
Ba Momoduba.
Subject: Re: UNDERSTANDING MOH'M JALLOH'S VERY SOUND ECONOMICS
From: Olu Cole
To: All
Date Posted: 16:40:44 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Bambay, you are quite correct in suggesting that we not only discuss the problems that you correctly stated Moh'm diagnosed almost 30 years in 1979, but the solutions as well.
Check out Moh'm's solution to this 30-year problem that he and another Siera Leonean, Rose, published this past January. I found it on All Africa.com
http://allafrica.com/stories/200701310722.html
The Revaluation of the Country's Currency
Concord Times (Freetown)
OPINION
January 30, 2007
Posted to the web January 31, 2007
By Mohamed A. Jalloh and Jonathan M. Rose
Freetown
Recently, the British government's international development agency, DFID, invited Sierra Leoneans resident abroad to comment on its proposed strategy for our country's development for the next five years.
The following article is based on the response of two Sierra Leonean professionals based in the USA. It is part of a comprehensive proposal urging a change in the strategy underlying foreign aid policies by Britain and other members of the international community that will be jointly submitted to DFID by the following Sierra Leonean groups based in the USA: The Sierra Leone Network, Youths for Sierra Leone Improvement, Young Leaders -- Sierra Leone, and the premier S/Leonean discussion forum on the Internet, SALONE Discussion Group.
Why a Change in Strategy is Needed in Foreign Aid to Sierra Leone
The best guarantee against pervasive poverty in Sierra Leone (SL) is a sound economy. Foreign aid is beneficial to Sierra Leoneans only if it can advance the goal of achieving a sound economy. We suggest a fundamental change in the strategy underlying foreign aid efforts as a way to overcome the past difficulties in achieving that goal.
The Case for Revaluation of the Sierra Leonean Currency
As the example of pre-World War II Germany attests, it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy. With a currency that has depreciated by more than 375,000 % since it was first devalued in 1979, and a people frequently ranked as the poorest in the world, SL's economy is in dire crisis.
We believe that the single greatest contributor to SL's economic crisis is the same one as that identified by one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, Lord John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain. In his seminal 1919 treatise, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," Lord Keynes accurately predicted that the destruction of the value of the German currency would precipitate a second world war, because, as he put it: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." For largely similar reasons, we believe SL's economic crisis to be rooted in the debauchery of the country's currency. Accordingly, we propose a never-before-tried measure in SL -- the revaluation of Sierra Leone's currency -- as the cornerstone of an economic recovery program for our country. This proposal is aimed at reversing the unprecedented inflation and other distortions in SL's economy in the wake of the 1979 devaluation and subsequent depreciation of the Leone that have made it virtually impossible to sustain economic growth or alleviate poverty.
Whereas devaluation is a potent cure for balance of trade problems in industrialized countries, in Sierra Leone it has spawned perverse consequences. In particular, devaluation has induced a condition of fundamental disequilibrium by creating a self-perpetuating vicious cycle of poverty - low incomes leading to low demand that leads to low production which leads to lower incomes.
Infrastructure has been depleted and the ability to maintain viability as a sovereign nation has rapidly decreased. The interruption of this cycle requires either massive external intervention, in general, or a controlled reversal of the currency devaluation, in particular. Our proposal to revalue the Leone is specifically intended to break that vicious cycle of poverty in which millions of Sierra Leoneans have long been trapped by reversing the currency devaluation.
How to Implement a Revaluation of the Sierra Leonean Currency The revaluation of the Leone requires meticulous and diligent planning for it to succeed. At a minimum, the process should be transparent and equitable enough to afford each and every Sierra Leonean a reasonable opportunity to adjust their business, educational, social and/or bureaucratic activities to the expected realities prescribed by the intended new exchange rate.
It can be done by a SL government decree to re-establish a par value for the currency against a major world currency such as the US dollar or the British pound. While government intervention is critical, simply decreeing the par value of the currency is not sufficient. Issues such as the use of old currency and corruption of the re-evaluation process could derail the effort. It also could potentially create a greatly destabilizing situation.
Alternatively, value in the Leone can be re-established through open market interventions, including, but not limited to, actions by the Sierra Leone government and private Sierra Leoneans pursuing their legitimate business and other interests, in buying and selling foreign currency. While this would require far more time than a decree, it would inspire greater market confidence, create lesser disturbance of social strata, and distribute the wealth being injected into the country more evenly than by simple government fiat.
The Critical Role of Foreign Aid Whichever mechanism is chosen, the infusion of foreign exchange into the banking system at levels sufficient to sustain the exchange rate of the Leone at par with the benchmark foreign currency will be critical to the success of the revaluation. This is where foreign aid can play a critical role -- by providing the foreign exchange required to sustain the exchange rate through the transition period until market stability is achieved without the need for such support.
The benefits will be significant: The harmful parallel market for foreign currency would disappear, thereby restoring all foreign exchange transactions within the official banking system. This will decrease the need for foreign exchange support by aid donors. The removal of the distortions in SL's economy would engender growth by removing the purchasing power disadvantage imposed upon indigenous Sierra Leoneans.
At that point, the remaining focus of efforts to alleviate poverty would be SL government action to correct income disparities that would otherwise prevent the widespread dispersal of the benefits of the economic growth resulting from the revaluation of the currency.
About the Authors Mohamed Jalloh is the founding Managing Director of a financial services company based in suburban Washington, D.C., USA, that manages investments for corporations, partnerships and high net worth individuals. His internationally published writings on the effects of foreign aid and devaluation on Sierra Leone's development span the last twenty-eight years.
Jonathan Rose is a research and development engineer and organizational management specialist based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. He has been studying currency economics for the past twenty years.
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Copyright © 2007 Concord Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
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Subject: Kabs, What's Wrong with You, My Brother?
From: Tobangay Max-Kanu
To: All
Date Posted: 05:48:58 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: adsl-074-232-224-027.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 74.232.224.27
Message:
I must admit that the level of incompetence, intolerance, naivety and down right immaturity displayed daily by certain forumites on each other is too disgusting. Come on Kabs, your newspaper is highly respected and widely read all over the world. You can't let a few bad apples ruin your paper's reputation.
Allowing some of these contributors to tear at each other is a daily spectacle we continue to witness. Why a moderator would allow some repeat contributors, who can't write good English or spell correctly, invade this forum is beyong my imagination.
Our country is in a state of change and together we must support the new EBK government in its fight to bring back sanity and respect to our motherland. We can't afford to lose sight of the tremendous task facing the new APC government. This is what we should focus on when we contribute to this forum. Kabs, what's wrong with you, my brother?
We need to work together, support each other in that sacred pursuit to make our Sierra Leone the blessed country it's used to be. Word to the wise. Lonta.
Subject: Re: Kabs, What's Wrong with You, My Brother?
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 09:51:20 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd597107.netvigator.com at 218.102.129.107
Message:
Tobangay Max-Kanu, there is a program on MTV called "your mama" where people attacks each other's mama on TV watched by billions, not millions, so I don't see your point here.
Furthermore, I respect what Kab is doing by giving us the platform to entertain and educate each other, whether in pure English language from people like you who have just be Knighted by the Queen of England, or in jargons, we must acknowledge that we have been blessed by this forum, at least some of us, if not all.
The point about us is that we are too serious to our fault. I have attended a lecture where the lecturer found it extremely hard to pronounce the word "characteristic" (ka ta ka ta ka ta riks) sounding like a dog fighting to smash a ten-inch bone, but there was not even a sniff in the lecture room--people focused on the main point because they knew that the lecturer was no Shakespeare.
To progress, we must tolerate the good and the not-so-good. And I must say that Kab is doing a fine job in this area. Keep it up Kab.
Subject: TOBANGAY-MY BROTHER
From: Brabanxx
To: All
Date Posted: 08:33:26 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: Brabanxx@aol.com
Entered From: c-68-45-71-117.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 68.45.71.117
Message:
Tobangay, long time no hear! Please contact me on the webmail: Brabanxx@aol.com. I am eager to hear from you soonest.
Subject: WE WAS THERE ENMASSE!!
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 05:24:52 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
We was there en masse and participated in the national event. What a handful of disgruntled elements from the last executive of the SLPP did is not a reflection of the deeds and wishes of the majority of the membership.
I know a great number of our SLPP brothers that attended and were amazed that it was so properly organised save the heatwaves that saw so many people wanting medical attention.
Stop your generalisations - JJ Blood and his likes are not the SLPP - they want to hang on to their silliness. If there is a bone to contend, take the appropriate steps. They have made themselves helpless. I bet you will soon see them doing that which should have been done. Why did we try to have an injunction on the pronouncement of the final results - why did we try to get the courts attention on that? Why can't we do the same if we feel our people are being victimised and their livelihoods taken? How silly for the few to think their failed policies and strategies that cost us the election loss will be taken seriously.
We as a party will regroup and reinvent ourselves for the national good and try to be a formidable opposition.
Subject: Re: WE WAS THERE ENMASSE!!
From: KING LOGGY
To: All
Date Posted: 05:53:21 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
Chez
The APC, in less than 100 days, discovered something the SLPP tried for 11 years and did not find. I will not show my face in public either if I were a member of the past administration.
Subject: Re: WE WAS THERE ENMASSE!!
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 08:01:43 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
Nice try!! We are humans and will be a dignified move for us to be able to atone and face you guys in public.
I am not afraid or ashamed to atone!!
Subject: For Sengbe et al:POLITICS OF NAIVETY COSTS LOTS OF VOTES
From: Plein Tok
To: All
Date Posted: 01:40:21 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: gateway.cyberstar.com at 209.239.66.36
Message:
The first disaster that attended the SLPP, prior to the August 11 elections, was the refusal by both the presidential candidate, Solomon Berewa and vice presidential candidate, Alhaji Momodu Koroma from taking part in a very crucial presidential and vice presidential debates respectively which many observers believe was good for the SLPP as well as the nation.
The negative response of the SLPP to take part in the debates of July 2007 at the Miatta Conference Centre and the Lagoonda Entertainment Complex was a non-starter as many opportunities were lost.
Firstly, many Sierra Leoneans saw that refusal to talk to them about the aims, objectives and plans of the SLPP as an exercise in arrogance and naivety.
Sierra Leoneans are still in doubt to fathom how a man who wanted to rule them could refuse to tell them what he would do if he was given the chance to clinch the presidency.
They therefore saw his refusal to talk to the people of Sierra Leone, through the presidential debate, as the genesis of unquestionable dictatorship.
They believe that the refusal to talk to them about the plans and programmes of the SLPP pending the elections meant that if Solomon Berewa had won the elections, he was going to rule without consulting his subjects.
They also saw their denial to debate with their political opponents as a means of creating a frosting relationship in the leadership hierarchy of Sierra Leone of which he was a part.
Moreover, they also believe that it was utter contempt to refuse a presidential debate that had all the potential to enable him sell the SLPP to the voters.
The international community, which helped to organise the presidential and vice presidential debate, especially UNIOSIL, UNDP and others saw the refusal of the SLPP to take part as an insult to their various governments and taxpayers whose monies were needed to conduct the elections.
The question in the minds of the international community was - will our taxpayers allow us to pour their money into Sierra Leone and into the hands of a leader who does not want to talk to his own subjects and members of the international community?
The answer, of course, was no, Sierra Leone was going to be a pariah state if the SLPP had won simply because you cannot keep malice with the government and partners that support you.
When all these mistakes are tallied, one would wonder whether the SLPP had not infact lost the election on the day they blatantly refused to take part in the presidential and vice presidential debates.
And as the clock ticks away that wasteful opportunity, some schools of political thinking in Sierra Leone didn’t believe that the SLPP was going to throw away another chance and start the 2012 campaign on a wrong footing.
And this time, the SLPP has refused to take part in a very important national occasion, of which the two political parties are core participants, the inauguration of the winner of the September 8 general elections, President Ernest Bai Koroma.
Unfortunately, in this inauguration too, members of the international community were heavily present and there was no doubt that they must have felt slighted by the again refusal of the SLPP to participate in the epoch making event, not to talk about how the people of Sierra Leone feel about this slighting.
Notwithstanding the explanations of the SLPP Secretary General, the desire to mend fences, create a cohesive state and put Sierra Leone forward as a united country should have taken the front seat because all the complaints outlined by the SLPP Secretary General can be discussed in a round table and settled forever for the benefit of all Sierra Leoneans.
Inauguration comes once every five years and the opportunities afforded to the SLPP by this inauguration have been lost.
However, it is our hope that whoever wins the 2012 elections, the SLPP should make it a point of duty to participate in the inauguration if only to bring about peace and unity to the betterment of Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: For Sengbe et al:POLITICS OF NAIVETY COSTS LOTS OF VOTES
From: Sengbe
To: All
Date Posted: 11:14:42 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: nc-71-1-209-107.dyn.embarqhsd.net at 71.1.209.107
Message:
Plein Tok, I appreciate the perspectives you have outlined in your analyses.
I wholeheartedly agree that it was a grave mistake to have abstained from participating in the debates prior to the elections, and I did state my disappointment with that decision on the part of Mr. Berewa, and Mr. Momodu Koroma. This activity would have given them the opportunity to "out-shine" their opponents in articulation through the 'power' of their incumbency. But they did not seize to capitalize on that opportunity. They probably have their reasons, however intangible those reasons may be to us in particular. Anyway, that is water under the bridge, and the results of the elections may have seconded that decision.
The protest against participating in the inauguration ceremonies is very valid as far as I am concerned.
It is quite difficult for you to expect me to break bread with you harmoniously in a bacchanalian atmosphere when you break into my house, ransack it, cart away all my valuables, leave it in complete tatters, violently harrass and intimidate my family members, and when I report the matter to the authorities they, in turn, turn a blind eye to my complaints, with hardly a word of remorse from the leadership of the party these thugs were representing.
Your concern pertinent to the wrong message being sent to S/Leoneans, and the representatives of the international community with respect to the lack of participation in the inauguration ceremonies should be reversed into the question; does this new government intend to protect ALL the peoples of Sa Lon?
The violence and intimidation they have imposed on our party members at the initial stages of their mandate should also be of concern to you, especially since this aspect again ushers in the days of yester-years when their "fathers" in the OLD APC practiced the same form of governance, through the barrel of the gun, in terms of VIOLENCE, INTIMIDATION, LAWLESSNESS, THUGGERY, and FROLICKING IMMORALITY. Some of us are old enough to remember those days, and we do not wish for those standards to be revisited under this NEW APC. My fear is that if this collective behaviour (deemed to emanate from hierarchical encouragement, as per; na we geh power now) is continued due to the ascension of the new APC as the powerbrokers in governance presently, the chaos experienced in the '90's would be revisited with more dire consequences.
In short, the protest against participating in the inauguration ceremonies is supposed to send the message to Ernest and Co. that they should NOT sweep the grave concerns of citizens of the opposing side under the proverbial carpet, if peace is to be maintained and sustained in the nation under the mandate of their rule.
The levity with which they have treated these very grave offences against our Party and her members validates the protest, and I support it. With a thorough comprehension of the circumstances that led to this protest, I am quite sure that our foreign guests would be on our side as well.
Norto awujoh go make ar break bread with a "violent criminal" or "murderer". That is my opinion.
Subject: Re: For Sengbe et al:POLITICS OF NAIVETY COSTS LOTS OF VOTES
From: Stingray
To: All
Date Posted: 02:25:24 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: unikad5@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 82.99.234.198
Message:
Your points are sound and solid. I was among those who were utterly disappointed over the cancellation of the debate, but I didn't actually know that it was as a result of the SLPP Preso and VP's refusal to participate.
There's a point I am tempted to add. The message amplified by local musicians in relation to the disgruntled state of the country helped a great deal to damage the SLPP party. Unfortunately, the SLPP, complacent and lethagic, thought that they could have bought votes with the usual last-minute spending spree. Well, yes, the people collected what they needed to survive and voted for a change of government.
Thanks again for the info.
Subject: Bold step by APC But I am SLPP - Lansana Nyallay
From: Awoko
To: All
Date Posted: 01:25:52 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: gateway.cyberstar.com at 209.239.66.36
Message:
The appointment of Dr Lansana Nyallay by President Ernest Bai Koroma to serve as deputy minister of education youth and sports sparked controversies among some people about his political allegiance.
Some say he was SLPP but after losing at the SLPP convention, his loyalty became shaky. Others say he pitched tent with the PMDC which later formed an alliance with the APC.
That controversy was laid to rest Tuesday when Dr Lansana Nyallay faced the parliamentary Appointments and Public Service Committee for an interview.
It was Hon Sheku Badara Bashiru Dumbuya of the APC who asked him which political party he belonged to.
Dr Nyallay answered with magnanimity that, “I belong to the SLPP’
With that, the SLPP minority leader in parliament Hon Momoh Pujeh intervened by asking: “are you a registered member of the party”. “Yes sir,” he answered.
Then he asked, “do you have your party card with you?” “No, not with me,” he answered.
“We just want to be certain here because some people say you are APC, PMDC, SLPP and I don’t know as minority where you belong,” Hon. Pujeh said. When Dr Nyallay was asked where his allegiance belonged, he told the committee that, “there are three stages in managing the country, time for election, campaign and time for governance.
When the time for governance comes in and the president takes the priority to call on people who have the country at heart, not the political party.”
He went on, “there is a time for all of us to render the best service we can, that’s what the president have in mind, we must have the determination to develop the country under his party for which I intend to serve to the best of my ability regardless of party symbolism.” He emphasized that he was coming as a Sierra Leonean dedicated to serve and to produce the best he could to make the country number one
Subject: Re: Bold step by APC But I am SLPP - Lansana Nyallay
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 05:41:58 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
I am deeply touched by Dr. Nyally's responses in our parliament. How many of us can be so frank to speak out, without fear of compromising their self interests. Such is a noble and honourable man. We are a very small nation and the tasks to hand require the inputs of cross-party human resources to help forge forward. It is a very difficult process to balance - the party of the day and your principles and ideals.
Let UNITY, FREEDOM AND JUSTICE reign!!
Subject: Re: Bold step by APC But I am SLPP - Lansana Nyallay
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 06:59:26 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Chez, you hit the nail on the head. I am proud of Dr Nyallay for his dedication to country and not just to party. We can all learn from this wonderful man.
Have a wonderful Sunday brother,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: Bold step by APC But I am SLPP - Lansana Nyallay
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 08:04:55 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
You too sister. We need to grow above pettiness and selfisness. Those who want to stay away have no feelings for the ills that unnecessarily befell our people. We pray they see beyond their little understanding of what is a nation of diversity!!
Subject: Understanding Exchange Rate Policy: Can the Leone survive?
From: Christopher Warburton, Ph.D.(Econ).
To: All
Date Posted: 01:20:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: gateway.cyberstar.com at 209.239.66.36
Message:
Understanding Exchange Rate Policy: Can the Leone survive?
The international monetary system has evolved from a fixed exchange rate system to a managed floating regime. The Gold Standard flourished between 1880 and 1914 when Britain was the dominant economic power. However, the system ultimately imploded after the First World War. The sustenance of a fixed-exchange rate regime became unrealistic for a variety of reasons.
The interregnum was chaotic. Competitive devaluation, and trade restrictions, also known as “beggar-thy-neighbor policies,” in addition to Britain’s insistence on going back to the golden days, contributed to unemployment, inflation, and some might argue, the depression of the 1930s.
The Bretton Woods system, otherwise known as the gold-exchange standard, was designed to bring order and stability to the international financial system which was in disarray. In actual fact, the system marked the beginning of the end, as the reliance on gold irretrievably lost its preeminence. The supply of gold could no longer keep up with the volume of world trade, and as economic power shifted from Britain to America, the American dollar became the logical numeraire to salvage the moribund gold standard.
The resulting compromise out of Bretton Woods was an adjustable peg, a combination of the fixed-exchange rate and temporary financing out of international reserves until a realignment of currencies can be attained. Bretton Woods created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the so-called World Bank. The IMF was designed to maintain exchange rate stability and assist with the rectification of balance of payments disequilibrium. Unlike the World Bank, which was originally created for structural changes and reconstruction, the primary goals of the IMF were limited to increased trade and stabilization challenges. Members could use the resources of the Fund on short-term basis, based on their quota.
The trust in the US dollar was transient. The gold reserve of the US was quickly depleted as it shrunk to approximately half of its 1945 value in 1970, largely because the dollar came under speculative attack as a result of US deficit and devaluation. Gold became preferable to dollar, and by 1971, American monetary authorities and the then President, Nixon, came to the realization that the regime was indefensible. America could no longer defend the convertibility of US$1 to 35 ounces of gold. Convertibility was suspended. The gold-exchange standard came to an end, but not before the ill-advised experiment of a two-tier system that intensified speculation about the viability of the dollar.
The Contemporary Monetary System and the Leone
The current system is occasionally described as a managed floating regime. It is a system that allows countries to float their currencies, while providing scope for government intervention to avert precipitous depreciation or escalating appreciation. Depreciation, appreciation, devaluation, overvaluation, and revaluation are technical terms that must be used with some amount of precaution and not casually.
Depreciation is appropriately used when a currency loses value under the flexible or floating regime. It suggests no deliberate intervention by a nation’s monetary authorities, although intervention may be necessary to correct it. The usual diagnosis in such a situation is devaluation. Appreciation is the opposite of depreciation under the same type of regime. An overvalued currency is a currency which has lost value and must therefore be devalued to increase its prospects of recovery in the foreign exchange market. A currency which is excessively strong, or has appreciated phenomenally must be revalued. This is not the case with the Leone.
The larger issue is: Can policy intervention produce the desired result under exogenous constraints? There are obvious reasons why devaluation has not worked very well for Sierra Leone: (i) The rigidity of the structure of the Sierra Leonean economy; (ii) The lack of diversity in articles of trade; (iii) Corruption, which stymied all the prospects of stabilization; and (iv) The inelasticity of foreign demand i.e. lack of foreign responsiveness to Sierra Leonean exports (even when they are marketable).
There are substantive reasons why corruption cannot be dissociated from exchange rate performance. For example, excessive money laundering, which is also a crime in international law, endangers monetary policy and the value of the local currency of a small economy. Bribery or corruption to deliberately circumvent the authority of a central bank in order to use foreign currency for counterproductive purposes is detrimental to exchange rate stability. The malfeasance that has been associated with misinvoicing and under-reporting of export income has a direct correlation to the performance of the Leone. This leads us to a central issue: Determination of a foreign exchange rate. What factors determine an exchange rate?
The major determinants of the value of a currency (not in order of importance) are: (i) Productivity; (ii) Relative inflation rates; (iii) Real interest rates (iv) Consumer preferences; (v) Government trade policy; (vi) Corruption; and (vii) Expectations associated with the price movement of a local currency relative to others (speculation).
Of these factors, productivity, trade policies; and corruption are crucially important to the fundamental strength of the currency of a developing nation like Sierra Leone. The most immediate challenge confronting the Leone is the development of a strategy that will promote innovation and exports in a fiercely competitive global economy so that the national economy can generate income while keeping corruption at bay. Alternatively, attracting long-term capital to prevent capital reversibility should be seen as a critical option. Capital inflow is highly contingent on the infrastructure and environment for foreign investment (including transparent laws and assurances of upholding the rule of law) i.e. assurances to respect property rights guaranteed by international law (a safeguard against illegal expropriation). Invariably, exchange rates do not take on a life of their own, nor can they be determined by fiat on a sustained basis.
A looming or emerging issue confronting Sierra Leone is the feasibility of economic integration (West African optimum currency area) and the subsequent status of the Leone in 2009 or thereafter. It is obviously prudent to pay very close attention to convergence criteria at this time, if the Eco should be a reality for the Sierra Leonean economy. Price stability and debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) per capita ratio are paramount preconditions for the uncertain economic transition. One might then ask the relevant questions: Is the end of monetary sovereignty at hand? How is the end of monetary sovereignty (assuming it happens) going to affect the economy of Sierra Leone, in a tenuous arrangement?
*Christopher Warburton is Assistant Professor of Law & Economics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA
Subject: Aminata: 2 X-chromosomes in all my cells????
From: Titi
To: All
Date Posted: 23:35:33 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
Aminata,
We humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in our body. 22 pairs of the 23 do not have XX chromosomes. They have different chromosomes based on their genetic function. The 23 rd. Pair is called the sex chromosome. The function of this chromosome is to determine the sex of the progeny. And it is in this chromosome that you have XY for male and XX for female
Subject: Re: Aminata: 2 X-chromosomes in all my cells????
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 06:38:23 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Dear Titi,
I didn't want to talk about all the 46 chromosomes in the nucleus of the human cell. So I just mentioned the fact that I have two X chromosomes (which all females usuually have). I didn't want to turn my piece into a genetics lecture. But as you correctly noted two of the 46 chromosomes are sex chromosomes (XX for females and XY for males). Thanks indeed for your astute observation.
Aminata.
Subject: Re: Aminata: 2 X-chromosomes in all my cells????
From: lawlawde80
To: All
Date Posted: 03:46:44 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: lawlawde80@yahoo.com
Entered From: 68-184-42-3.static.oxfr.ma.charter.com at 68.184.42.3
Message:
Titi what is this all about? did i miss out on any thing cause if am correct Aminata is the woman that opened a forum for debate here about JC's and homebased salone gals, i just dont know where your genetics factored in. Please clarify because your topic is a little out of order.
thanks
Subject: Re: Aminata: 2 X-chromosomes in all my cells????
From: Titi
To: All
Date Posted: 07:40:47 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
Aminata has clarified it.
Subject: palm tree foundation
From: saidu
To: All
Date Posted: 21:33:59 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: sai@hotmail.com
Entered From: pool-72-66-26-251.washdc.fios.verizon.net at 72.66.26.251
Message:
I SEE SLPP IS OUTSOURCING TO THE PALM TREE FOUNDATION.SORRY TO INFORM DR U.N.S JAH THAT WE HAVE PLANT IN THAT FOUNDATION. DR U.N.S JAH IS NOT GOING TO BE THE SLPP LEADER.
Subject: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 21:22:20 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
The value of a nation's currency vis-a-vis the currencies of its trading partners is determined by market forces, that is, demand and supply. It is also determined by the magnitude of that country's foreign exchange reserves which can be used to support the value of that currency as it ebbs and flows with the viccissitudes of the markets.
Up until the mid 70's, Sierra Leone had adequate external reserves to support the curency. But as we progressed toward hosting the 1980 OAU summit, a perfect storm of events occurred. Demand for foreign currency to support our appetite for imported goods was already increasing, but was exacerbated by the rise in the price of oil (pretty close to $90/ barrel in today's dollars). The foreign reserves were decimated by Siaka Stevens to finance white elephant projects (OAU Village, Skandia street lights, the stadium, Mammy Yoko hotel, Lungi airport extension, Aberdeen bridge etc etc.) The supply of dollars dried up as world prices for our unprocessed commodities nose-dived and the diamond industry was "liberalized" breaking the SLST/NDMC monopoly on diamond exports. Marampa mines shut down. It is alleged that the late Sam Bangura, then governor of BoSL, may have met his untimely death because of his refusal to release the nations foreign reserves for non-productive purposes. But that is a whole other story.
With this perfect storm of events, it was only a matter of time before the artificial leone-dollar parity would have to be abandoned as the country had no foreign reserves to support the value of the leone. It was also around this time that we became heavily dependent on the importation of rice and the Stevens government began borrowing wildly to feed a restive populace and to help pay for some of the lingering costs of the OAU. When foreign government's and financial institutions stopped lending to the government, they turned first to SLPMB, PKOM and other parastatls and borrowed money from them. Then they went on to borrow from Sierra Rutile and Sieromco against royalties that had not even been earned. These guys borrowed against production 5-10 years into the future! Then they started borrowing through the issue of tresury bills and government bonds sending interest rates through the roof. Obviously this nonsense was not sustainable.
Another mysterious death of a bank governor and enter the IMF. Away went the subsidies on rice and electricity. Away went price controls. In came the dreaded foreign exchange "pipeline" where some transactions went through at the artificial official rate and others went through at the black market rate. In came exchange controls and political control of foreign exchange priorities. Note that spare parts for dear old Sulzer 5 at Blackhall Road were not considered a priority. The era of daily blackouts had begun.
From this point onwards, I agree with everything Mohm has catalogued.
Turning to potential methods of restoring the value of the leone - there is really only one way - rebuild those external reserves so that we have equilbrium between imports, exports, and external reserves.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Total Picture
To: All
Date Posted: 12:53:33 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: totalpicture@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-24-98-69-54.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 24.98.69.54
Message:
Thank you KKW for some solid economic analysis. I think is missing two
aspects both concerned with SLPMB.
1. What role did the movement away from prison labor in Masanke and
other plantations have on our agricultural output?
2. What effect did Mohm's own role in cohorts with Suma have in
destroying that institution?
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Historian
To: All
Date Posted: 14:03:50 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
To ask "What effect did Mohm's own role in cohorts with Suma have in destroying that institution?" is to display a lack of familiarity with the actual. stellar record of performance that tyhe SLPMB achieved under the leadership of its the late Managing Director, Musa K. Suma.
In case yours is a case of a lack of knowledge -- and not the usual malicious defamation that typifies the idle chatter of comngosah en lie Salone people who know nothing about SLPMB, please read the following factual record of Musa Suma's historically exemplary performance as Managing Director of SLPMB.
The factual and independently verifiable record of SLPMB's operations under Musa Suma set forth below also testifies to the equally superlative role that Moh'm Jalloh played in making SLPMB absolutely the best run company in the entire Sierra Leone between 1978 and 1983, when Musa Suma retired and left SLPMB with the best finances in its history.
Notice that SLPMB did NOT collapse under Musa Suma's management. When SLPMB did collapse from mismanagement and corruption under the NPRC in 1993, that happened fully TEN (10) YEARS after Musa Suma had long retired and left SLPMB with the best finances in SLPMB"s history.
From Awareness Times Newspaper in Freetown
COMMENTARIES
A Tribute to Sierra Leone's Musa Khalil Suma (1942-2007)
By Mohamed A. Jalloh (mohmj@aol.com)
Mar 10, 2007, 13:35
About the author: Mohamed A. Jalloh (pictured below), known to his friends as Moh’m, was head of the Economic Planning Department at SLPMB during most of Mr. Musa K. Suma’s tenure as Managing Director. Mr. Jalloh is currently Managing Director of Bridgedal Capital Management, LLC, a financial services firm based in suburban Washington, D.C. in the USA.
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On behalf of my family and myself, I would like to extend to Mrs. Ramatu Suma, nee Hassan, the children and grandchildren, Ms. Yeabu Suma, Mr. Momodu Janneh, Jesmed Suma and the rest of the entire family and friends of the late Alhaji Musa Khalil Suma, our heartfelt sympathy upon their grave personal loss.
It is one of the certainties of life on earth that every man or woman who comes into this world must exit it, sooner or later. Yet, no man or woman can know the exact date and time of his or her own exit. Accordingly, those among us who worship God know it to be their sacred duty to do good deeds and follow His teachings. That obligation starts from the first day that we are capable of doing so until that certain, but unknown, time when we take our exit to face Him to account for our deeds on earth.
Sadly, that day has come much too soon for Musa Khalil Suma, former Managing Director of the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB), one of SL’s leading foreign exchange earners during his tenure. At the time he suddenly passed away on Monday, February 26, 2007, Mr. Suma was also the owner and chief executive officer of the privately held Sumatu International, a holding company with subsidiaries in SL, Guinea and the UK. With Alhaji Suma’s untimely death, SL has lost one of its great business minds among the generation of its highly educated sons and daughters which came of age at our country’s independence in 1961. That generation, born in the 1940’s and brought up in a golden age in SL when education was considered among the highest priorities for most families, has now entered its sixth decade of life. For some of them, including the late Mr. Suma, reaching the Biblical landmark of three score and ten years of life on earth would be one of the few goals that would forever remain out of their characteristically ambitious reach.
As the torch of life is passed from our beloved compatriots who have preceded us to the great beyond, to those of us still left to forge our way here on earth, it becomes our solemn duty to eulogize them. And so I shall do for our recently departed father, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin, and friend — the late Alhaji Musa Khalil Suma. I do so with humility and praise to God (or Allah, in the Arabic language of Islam), the maker of heaven and earth.
Among the many admirable qualities of the late Musa Suma were his devotion to Islam, his humility, his empathy, and his lifelong commitment to the pursuit of excellence in education and business. In a demonstration of another of his estimable qualities — his legendary generosity — Mr. Suma dedicated himself to a rare goal in SL. That goal was the personal and professional development of others, particularly SL’s promising youth. That is how Musa Suma — the academic over-achiever with multiple graduate degrees in economics who had benefited from the kindness of many S/Leoneans at critical points in his life — generously gave back to the society that had nurtured him from his humble beginnings.
Among the most influential of those benefactors was the late Pa Arthur Williams, a longtime senior teacher at St. Edward’s Secondary School in Freetown. Mr. Williams not only opened his home to a young Musa Suma when the latter traveled to Freetown from Kambia to attend the sixth form at St. Edward’s, but he also daily mentored him. It was Pa Arthur, as the legendary history teacher was known to Mr. Suma and many generations of Old Edwardians (including myself), whom Mr. Suma credited for his introduction to the principles of economics and nationalism.
Musa Suma’s formative experience growing up in the tribally, religiously, and culturally diverse homes in the rural provinces and in the urban capital city of SL laid the foundation for his lifelong practical commitment to the morally uplifting principle of equal opportunity for all S/Leoneans, irrespective of social status, age, sex, tribe, or other ascr1ptive quality.
It is with humility that I acknowledge that I was among a large number of young graduates of Fourah Bay College and Njala University, hailing from every tribe in SL and ranging in age from barely 21 to their early 30’s, who had the privilege of benefiting from the tribe-blind and status-blind disciplined mentoring of one of the most brilliant business minds that SL has ever produced — Alhaji Musa Suma. In return, Mr. Suma reaped the reward of dedicated service from a cadre of young professionals from the time he was promoted Managing Director of SLPMB at the tender age of 35 in 1978 through his retirement five years later. During that time, he transformed SLPMB into one of the best run companies in either the private or public sector in SL.
I had the honor of first meeting the late Mr. Suma at a time when I myself had barely come of age. The meeting occurred at a place to which I was no stranger — the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board. I had worked there as an intern four years earlier while I was still in my mid-teens, during the vacation following the end of my first year at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, SL. The meeting, which occurred about three months after I had started working full time at SLPMB as an Accounting Assistant (the entry level position for college graduates with an economics degree and a specialization in accounting), was a testament to Mr. Suma’s open-door policy to every employee. It ended with the start of what would turn out to be a direct working relationship between us at SLPMB that would end five years later upon Mr. Suma’s retirement as Managing Director and his entry into private business as owner and chief executive officer of Sumatu International.
During our meeting, Mr. Suma observed the first ever trend analysis of SLPMB’s financial results which I had compiled on my own, in addition to performing my regular duties as an accounting assistant. I had embarked upon the project after I had discovered that no such analysis existed at SLPMB. Following the meeting, Mr. Suma referred me to the head of the accounting department (Accounts Manager) for an interview to evaluate my suitability for a promotion. I was interviewed subsequently by a panel comprising SLPMB’s Financial Controller and the Account Manager, and, based upon my performance, I was promoted to the position of Accountant. My first assignment would have been daunting for any recent graduate, even one who had the additional advantage of being the first S/Leonean to ever graduate from Fourah Bay College in its then nearly 150-year history with an honors degree in economics with a major in accounting, as I was privileged to be.
However, it was a testament to Mr. Suma’s uncanny ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the hundreds of employees who worked under his supervision that he instructed that I be assigned to one of the toughest jobs at SLPMB at the time. It was also evidence of two of Mr. Suma’s many other admirable qualities. First, he had an unshakeable commitment to the morally upright principle that neither age nor tribe should be a barrier to any capable S/Leonean’s opportunity to serve his/her country. Second, he was committed to the principle that employees should be rewarded only as a result of their performance. Those twin qualities and many others illustrated in my personal story and that of many others who were fortunate to have worked with Mr. Suma represent the secrets of his phenomenal success as the most accomplished managing director of the largest parastatal in SL at the time — SLPMB. Musa Suma’s stellar accomplishment was made even more remarkable by the fact that he was the youngest person ever appointed managing director in SLPMB’s 47-year history.
And that was how I, a S/Leonean from the Fula tribe who had not met Mr. Suma (a S/Leonean from the Susu tribe) before I started working at SLPMB in 1978, came to be assigned to the challenging job of heading the accounting department at the SL Palm Kernel Oil Mill (SLPKOM) in early 1979. The mill was a subsidiary of SLPMB that manufactured palm kernel oil and cake from palm kernels for export to Europe. A few months earlier, Mr. Suma had demonstrated his characteristic commitment to nationalism by successfully prevailing upon the APC government of President Siaka Stevens not to renew the management contract for SLPKOM with a British company. At the time, that company was being paid a huge amount of scarce foreign exchange by the SL government to manage the operations of SLPKOM, which was making losses.
In the wake of the government’s decision, Mr. Suma assembled a team that included other young S/Leoneans. Significantly, most of them were Fourah Bay College graduates in their twenties and early thirties, who belonged to many different tribes, from Aku to Creole to Mende and Themne. It was this team, led by Mr. Suma, which took over from the expatriate management of SLPKOM in 1979, and managed the company’s accounting, engineering, human resources, manufacturing, marketing, security and other corporate functions. Remarkably, within 18 months, the SLPMB management team had successfully turned around the erthswhile money-losing operations of SLPKOM under its expatriate management to a profitable business managed entirely by young S/Leoneans.
As Mr. Suma promoted members of our class of proven FBC graduates to top management positions in SLPMB during the succeeding years, his commitment to developing promising young Sierra Leonean graduates only increased. This coincided with SLPMB’s emergence as the premier choice for employment for many young college graduates in SL during the early 1980’s. It gave me great satisfaction to play a leading role in recruiting the most qualified graduates from the economics and accounting departments of FBC to what was then much-sought employment at SLPMB.
The attraction of SLPMB as a magnet for S/Leoneans seeking a fair reward for their skills was not an accident. It represented a deliberate policy by Mr. Suma to introduce financial, human resource, marketing, and other corporate policies which were designed to promote reasonable profitability in the operations of SLPMB, while promoting accountability to the SL government. Thereby, Mr. Suma guaranteed accountability for SLPMB’s activities to the ultimate owners of SLPMB — the people of SL. Indeed, during his tenure as managing director, SLPMB recorded the highest profit in its history even though it was paying the highest proportion of the world market price of its cocoa and coffee exports to SL’s farmers. In order to appreciate the phenomenal strides made by SLPMB under the direction of Musa Suma as its managing director, it is necessary to take a look at SLPMB before and after Mr., Suma’s tenure. So as to keep this tribute to a reasonable length, only the most significant of Mr. Suma’s numerous accomplishments will be noted.
In 1973, when a young S/Leonean economist working at the Ministry of Finance, Musa Khalil Suma, was appointed deputy managing director of one of SL’s largest foreign exchange earners, SLPMB, at the age of 30, he arrived at SLPMB to find many unwelcome surprises in SLPMB’s management and in its accounting, marketing, purchasing, and security operations, viz.
More than a decade after SL had obtained its independence from Great Britain in 1961, SL’s largest foreign exchange earner from its agricultural produce, SLPMB, was still being run by a British citizen as its managing director. Mr. Suma also discovered that, upon his appointment as deputy managing director, he became only the second college graduate among the several hundred SLPMB employees. Moreover, he was the only SLPMB employee with a degree in economics. Needless to say, he was also the only one with a graduate degree.
The new, young deputy managing director also found unwelcome surprises in SLPMB’s accounting operations. SLPMB did not have an adequate system of internal control for verifying the purchases from farmers of palm kernels, cocoa, coffee, and ginger that were received at SLPMB’s headquarters at Cline Town in Freetown for export. Accordingly, there was inadequate assurance that payments made by SLPMB were being made for produce that had actually been received into SLPMB’s stores. The probability for fraud was extremely high under such inadequate systems of internal financial controls. Indeed, six years earlier, the Beoku Betts commission of enquiry had actually found massive fraud involving produce allegedly bought and exported by SLPMB that it found to have been perpetrated by SLPMB officials in collusion with officials at SLPMB’s supervising ministry, the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Yet another problem identified by Mr. Suma in the system for buying produce was one that cost both the SLPMB and small farmers dearly. It involved the inadequate service provided by the private buying agents who bought produce from small farmers and sold it to SLPMB. Where these small farmers produced only a small crop or farmed at great distance from the major roads, their produce proved unattractive to buying agents. The ability of these farmers to sell their crop to SLPMB was therefore limited. Both they and SLPMB lost revenue as a result of their failure to deliver any of their produce to SLPMB.
In addition, Mr. Suma discovered that SLPMB did not have an adequate system for evaluating and monitoring the purchases of non-agricultural items such as office supplies, fuel, etc., that were required to run the vast operations of the company. Again, this inadequacy raised the probability of malfeasance in the purchasing activities of the company.
Yet, to his greatest surprise, the newly-appointed deputy managing director soon found out that he was relatively powerless to make the urgently-needed changes required to correct the anomalies he had discovered. This was because, having been recruited from outside SLPMB, he was perceived as an outsider by the rest of the management of SLPMB throughout his five-year tenure as deputy managing director. He was therefore kept away from the key levers of power within SLPMB’s management. Accordingly, it was only upon his promotion to managing director that he had the first real opportunity to make the sorely-needed changes.
In response to the inadequacy of the internal controls over SLPMB’s purchases of palm kernels, coffee, cocoa, and ginger, Mr. Suma took several corrective steps. They included the installation of a brand new weighbridge that recorded the independently verifiable weight of any and every lorry delivering produce to SLPMB’s stores in Freetown, both on their way in and out of SLPMB’s stores. This made it easier to verify the actual weight of produce purchased by SLPMB. In addition, a comprehensive payment system was installed in which payment was made by SLPMB only upon the presentation of authenticated weighbridge tickets, consonant warehouse receipts and independent verification by SLPMB’s Internal Audit department.
Moreover, a check could be issued only with two signatories, one from either the managing director or the deputy managing director, on the one hand, and the other from the Accounts Manager or another designated manager within SLPMB’s finance departments. This eliminated the possibility of fraud in SLPMB’s management absent collusion between the Managing Director or Deputy Managing Director, on the one hand, and the Accounts Manager or his or her alternate, on the other. Even then, the annual external audit conducted by the international firm of Peat Marwick & Co. would uncover any such malfeasance, if it had not been discovered by SLPMB’s internal auditors, unless the external auditors were themselves complicit and/or incompetent.
As regards similar problems of inadequate internal control affecting non-produce purchases, the new managing director also installed a comprehensive system for evaluating and monitoring all such purchases made by SLPMB. This involved strict adherence to budgeted limits and post-expenditure evaluation. That included variance analysis which identified any variation between the budgeted amounts and the expended amounts, for corrective action.
In order to resolve the other operations problems of SLPMB he had inherited, including an aging and inadequate fleet of lorries to transport produce from SLPMB’s stores in the eastern, southern and northern provinces to Freetown, Mr. Suma replaced SLPMB’s aging fleet of lorries with 23 brand new Mercedes Benz lorries. To address the need to reduce the down time resulting from routine service and repair work on SLPMB’s large fleet of vehicles, including light vehicles, while increasing the transparency thereof, Mr. Suma built an in-house garage for the servicing of all of SLPMB vehicles. Furthermore, in a specific effort to extend the reach of SLPMB’s purchasing activities to meet the previously neglected needs of small farmers in remote areas of SL, Mr. Suma also created a subsidiary of SLPMB called National Produce Company (NAPCO). NAPCO’s field employees were assigned the task of traveling to remote villages to make sure that every farmer who wanted to sell his/her produce to SLPMB would be afforded a timely opportunity to do so at the applicable published producer prices paid to all farmers.
SLPMB’s operations expanded greatly during Mr. Suma’s tenure. This was due to two main factors. One was the result of the company’s improved operations. The other was the addition of rice distribution to the company’s traditional export activities, after the government’s Rice Corporation collapsed in 1979. As a result, a need arose to expand SLPMB’s storage capacity, office space, and skilled management and mid-level staff. At the same time, Mr. Suma recognized that it was important to compensate adequately not just the farmers who produced the crops SLPMB purchased, but also the staff who facilitated the collection, storage, preparation and export of those crops. Accordingly, Mr. Suma introduced several initiatives to boost staff morale.
Mr. Suma characteristically responded decisively to all the above concerns. He embarked on a storage expansion program during which he built eighteen (18) huge stores throughout SL. Addressing mainly the need to store rice which SLPMB was importing at the rate of roughly 10,000 tons a month during his entire tenure, Mr. Suma constructed rice stores in the populous rice consumption Western Area: Two at Jui, three at Wellington, two at Kennedy Street, and seven at Kissy Dockyard. To boost the storage of mainly coffee, cocoa, palm kernels and ginger, Mr. Suma built additional stores in the eastern and southern provinces — two each in the respective provincial centers of Kenema and Bo.
In regard to the acute shortage of office space amidst SLPMB’s expanding operations, Mr. Suma completely refurbished and modernized the small headquarters building SLPMB had occupied at Cline Town in Freetown since the 1960s. He also built new office buildings at SLPMB’s head office to accommodate the expanding shipping and personnel departments. He replaced the single Toyota minibus that could transport only a minute fraction of the several hundred SLPMB employees with two identical brand new tour-size buses. In a testament to his belief in equal opportunity for all employees, Mr. Suma allocated one bus each to blue-collar workers, including SLPMB’s laborers, and to SLPMB’s white collar workers. He extended the same concept to SLPMB’s staff housing loan program. In any given year that such loans were granted, Mr. Suma required that housing loan recipients included representatives from every level of SLPMB employees, from laborers to management staff.
In response to SLPMB’s staff association’s request, Mr. Suma also built a small mosque for use by SLPMB’s largely Moslem employees to reduce the length of excused absences for prayers. For similar reasons, he constructed a staff canteen that served all of SLPMB’s employees who wished to pay for lunch there. He also established two health clinics for SLPMB employees — one at SLPMB’s headquarters and another at SLPKOM.
Finally, Mr. Suma embarked on a successful drive to recruit some of the brightest S/Leoneans in order to meet SLPMB’s expanding need for competent executives and mid-level managers. As a result, by the time he retired from SLPMB in 1983, all but one of the fifteen members of SLPMB’s management were S/Leoneans with college degrees — a far cry from the period five years earlier when he found only one other college graduate in SLPMB’s management. In another contrast from the period when Mr. Suma first arrived at SLPMB, it was commonplace to find many college graduates among SLPMB’s several hundred employees. Not surprisingly, the result of all the pioneering policies introduced by Mr. Suma at SLPMB was that SLPMB achieved unprecedented success in its operations.
The evidence that Musa Khalil Suma, the youngest person ever appointed managing director of SLPMB, was also its best managing director, is overwhelming.
In 1981, SLPMB recorded the highest profit in its history, while paying the highest proportion of the world market price of produce to SL’s cash crop farmers. It was a feat that was never equaled. It will remain unequalled, due to the fact that SLPMB collapsed in 1992 — nearly ten years after Mr. Suma had left SLPMB with the most solid balance sheet in its history. This fact was attested to by the financial statements audited upon his retirement in 1983 by the same firm of independent external auditors which had regularly audited SLPMB’s financial statements each and every year during Mr. Suma’s tenure as managing director — the internationally renowned auditing firm of Peat Marwick & Co.
In addition, during Mr. Suma’s tenure, other parastatals and government agencies, notably the Bank of SL, regularly visited SLPMB to study ways of adapting SLPMB’s comprehensive financial, personnel and staff welfare policies to improve their own operations.
The wide-ranging and significant improvements installed at SLPMB by Mr. Suma during his tenure as managing director, some of which are outlined above, represented the last such initiatives installed at SLPMB until its demise nearly a decade later.
If there is a surfeit of evidence that Mr. Suma’s tenure as managing director coincided with the most successful period in SLPMB’s history, so also is there evidence that SLPMB, under Mr. Suma’s tenure, became one of the best run companies in both the private and public sectors of SL, as noted above.
The untimely death of this very accomplished son of Kambia district leaves forever unanswered a tantalizing question, namely: Could Musa Khalil Suma have transformed our inefficiently-run country in the same manner that he had transformed an inefficiently-run SLPMB into the best run company it had ever been?
About the author: Mohamed A. Jalloh(pictured above), known to his friends as Moh’m, was head of the Economic Planning Department at SLPMB during most of Mr. Musa K. Suma’s tenure as Managing Director. Mr. Jalloh is currently Managing Director of Bridgedal Capital Management, LLC, a financial services firm based in suburban Washington, D.C. in the USA.
© Copyright 2005, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Edward
To: All
Date Posted: 08:18:09 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: edward@hotmail.com
Entered From: at 66.23.15.6
Message:
"Sumatu International,company holding subsidiaries in Sierra Leone,Guinea,UK". Sierra Leone-MULTIMILLION DOLLARS LAGOONDA COMPLEX-cassino,state-of-the-art movie thearter,disco seating next to Cape Sierra Hotel ETC.
Guinea-MULTIMILLION DOLLAR HIGH RISING SEATING NEXT TO OUR EMBASSY IN GUINEA.UK-MULTIMILLION DOLLAR HOUSES.
FELLOW SIERRA LEONEANS I DON'T HAVE A PHD IN ECONOMICS OR VERY BIG DEGREE IN ACCOUNTING LIKE MOHM'S AND HISTORIAN WHO KEEPS ON WRITING ABOUT ALL THE EVILS THAT IMF AND WORLD BANK DID TO SIERRA LEONE.I DO RESPECT HIS ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT BUT HE CAN'T FOOL ME INTO BELEVING THAT THE MASSIVE WEALTH AND INVESTMENT THAT MR SUMA MANIFESTED AFTER HE LEFT SLPMB WAS FROM HIS PAY AND BENIFIT AS MANAGING DIRECTOR OF SLPMB OR INHERITANCE FROM HIS FAMILY.CAN YOU USE ONE OF YOUR ECONOMICS OR ACCOUNTING THEORY TO EXPLAIN THE MISTERIOUS WEALTH OF SUMA INTERNATION.
HISTORIAN I THINK YOU ARE DOING INJUSTICE TO HISTORY BY SAYING SAYING THE FOLLOWING...
"IT WILL REMAIN UNEQUAL,DUE TO THE FACT THAT SLPMB COLLAPSED IN 1992-NEARLY TEN YEARS AFTER MR SUMA HAD LEFT SLPMB WITH THE MOST SOLID BALANCE SHEET IN ITS HISTORY."
YOUR BODY MOHM'S ON THE OTHER HAND SAID,"NOTICE THAT SLPMB DID NOT COLLAPSE UNDER MUSA SUMA'S MANAGEMENT.WHEN SLPMB DID COLLAPSE FROM MISMANAGEMENT AND CORRUPTION UNDER THE NPRC IN 1993,THAT HAPPENED FULLY TEN(10) YEARS AFTER MUSA HAD LONG RETIRED AND LEFT SLPMB WITH THE BEST FINANCES IN SLPMB'S HISTORY".
MOHM'S YOU'VE JUST LOST CREDIBILITY BY SAYING THAT.YOU SHOULD JUST SHOUT UP AND STOP POINTING FINGER ON EVERYONE ELSE.IF YOU THINK YOU ARE AN ACADEMIC GIANT WHO HAVE THE SUPPORT OF SOMEBODY LIKE HISTORIAN AND BEEN GIVEN A FRELD-DAY BY OTHER RESPECTED FORUMITES WHO ARE AVOIDING STANDING-UP TO YOU, BY LETTING YOU COMING INTO THE FORUM JUSTIFYING ALL THE STEALING AND THE THEFT DONE TO THE SLMPB DURING MR SUMA ERA,TRUST ME I WILL NOT LET YOU GET AWAY WITH THAT.
SHAME ON YOU TO EVEN SAY MISMANAGEMENT AND CORRUPTION UNDER THE NPRC IN 1993 WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COLLAPSE OF SLPMB.STRASSER WHO WAS THE HEAD OF NPRC WAS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL WHEN MR SUMA AFTER TAKING SLPMB APART.
HISTORIAN DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT "THE PHILIPS BROTHER"CAN YUO TELL US ABOUT THAT DEAL OR MY BE MOHM'S MIGHT BE ABLE TO THROW LIGHT ON THAT ONE.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - NOT REALLY ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 05:56:56 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"From this point onwards, I agree with everything Mohm has catalogued.
Turning to potential methods of restoring the value of the leone - there is really only one way - rebuild those external reserves so that we have equilbrium between imports, exports, and external reserves." says KKW
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KKW, your honesty is refreshing. It is a pleasant change from the shameful childish rants of the few but loud people among us (the PH.D crowd whose ignorance of economics is surpassed only by their determination to pull down their fellow Sierra Leoneans.
I have known Mohamed Jalloh since we were both students at Fourah Bay College's Faculty of Economics and Social Studies in Freetown in the late 1970s. I sat in class with him until he was transferred to the honours economics class by Prof. N. A. Cox-George, the dean of the faculty of economics. When the head of the accounting department, Mrs. Subuola Thompson also transferred Moh'm to the honours accounting class at the same time, there was a big problem at FBC's economics faculty because no one had ever been in more than one honours program in the history of FBC's economics department.
While the departments heads wracked their brains for a solution to the "problem" caused by Moh'm's top-of-the-class performance not just in economics but also in accounting, some of us who were his friends joked that he had become Bra Spider in the story many Sierra Leoneans know -- with one rope to his waist held by the dean who was also head of the dept. of economics, and the other rope held by the head of the accounting dept. As many people now know, the problem about which dept. should have the honour of Moh'm's brilliant academic presence in its honours class was solved in a rather easy way, looking back at it. Both the economics dept. and the accounting dept. were given the honour of having Moh'm in their honours classes! In the process, history was made at FBC when Moh'm became the first Sierra Leonean in the then 150 history of FBC to simultaneously be in both the honours economics and honors accounting programmes.
Forgive me, KKW, for delving into the brief history of Moh'm's academic background, but it is very important for you and others who don't know this truly unique Sierra Leonean to know his background for two reasons. First of all, unlike many of these western economists at the IMF and World Bank, Moh'm studied economists under the best economist Sierra Leone (and maybe Africa) has ever produced -- the late Prof. N.A. Cox-George, who was also professor of economics in Nigeria as well as an internationally renowned expert on the economics of African economies. Second, unlike these so-called Western economists, Moh'm was also an eye-witness to many of Sierra Leone's economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s which are at the root of our country's current problems. For both of those reasons, in my book, Moh'm Jalloh knows more about the economic problems of Sierra Leone than anybody that I know -- Sierra Leonean or foreigner. Don't take my word for it, just read his many articles on Sierra Leone that he has been publishing openly for the past 30 years or so since during the first year after he graduated from FBC with an honors degree in economics and accounting.
Many of us have agreed with Moh'm Jalloh's economic analysis of Sierra Leone's economic problems for one simple reason -- everything he says is based on facts and sound economics. So, I am not surprised to hear you say that you agree with Moh'm "from this point onwards." The reason why you don't agree with him entirely is that (forgive me for saying this), you got some of your facts wrong. Let me point your major mistake that prevented you from entirely agreeing with Moh'm's absolutely correct analysis of Sierra Leone's economic problems.
It is not true, as you claimed, that: "The supply of dollars dried up as world prices for our unprocessed commodities nose-dived and the diamond industry was "liberalized" breaking the SLST/NDMC monopoly on diamond exports." The supply of dollars did not dry up -- the dollars simply came from elsewhere than Sierra Leone's exports of diamonds, etc.
For you to easily know that what you said is not true, ask yourself this question: If, as you claim, the supply of dollars dried up because of the OAU expenses, rising demand for exports, etc., how did Sierra Leone manage to finish the OAU projects and continue to pay for imports since 1981 up to this day?
The correct answer is the same one that Moh'm Jalloh has focused on as the root cause of the problems that have now made our country one of the poorest in the world despite our diamonds, gold, iron ore, cocoa, coffee, fish, timber, beaches, etc. So, what is the answer? The answer my friend is a three letter word that may as well be a four letter word, given the damage it has caused the people of Sierra Leone over the past 30 years. Let me give you another hint: Where did President Siaka Stevens in 1979 find the money to finance the OAU and pay for imported food, oil, etc up to 1985 when he handed over power to Gen. Joseph Momoh? Still haven't guessed?
Well, let me give you more clues: From 1985 until 1992, when his APC government was overthrown by the NPRC, where did President Momoh get foreign exchange to finance the import of oil and rice that kept Sierra Leoneans receiving electricity and driving their cars? If you still haven't guessed, here are more hints: Where did the NPRC get foreign exchange to keep on importing oil, rice, and other items that kept Sierra Leoneans receiving electricity more more regularly than not until 1996, when its successor, the SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah, made blackouts a permanent fixture in Sierra Leoneans' lives for the next eleven years? Still don't get the answer? Then, let me finally quote you something from one of Moh'm's Jalloh's articles:
"The plain truth is that it is the IMF, and to a lesser extent, the World Bank, under the direction of their Western benefactor countries in the G8, which have perpetrated the most widespread corruption and economic mismanagement in SL since its independence. Simply put, the IMF and the World Bank bear the greatest responsibility for the extreme poverty of Sierra Leoneans today. Therefore, any plan intended to reduce poverty in SL must primarily address the corruption of the IMF and the World Bank in SL over the past 35 years, or it would woefully fail."
So, there you have it: It is the IMF -- and no one else -- which insisted on the devaluation of the then strong Leone as a condition for lending money to President Siaka Stevens in 1979. Now, let me qyote fore you what Moh'm Jalloh once wrote to me about the IMF's action:
"Of course, there is nothing wrong with the IMF imposing conditions for lending its money to our country. However, it is extreme corruption for the IMF to pretend that when it asked the Sierra Leone government to devalue its then-strong Leone, it was doing so to HELP Sierra Leone solve its foreign exchange shortage problems. That is demonstrably false because the IMF knows -- or should have known -- that devaluation would never work to cure the balance of payments (foreign exchange shortage) of a country like Sierra Leone because the structure of the SL economy is materially different from that of the typical Western economy where devaluation succeeds spectacularly well to cure a balance of payments problem.
"Therefore, when you devalue the Leone, instead of increasing SL's export revenues and reducing the country's import expenditure and thereby bring its foreign exchange demand for gods and service into balance with its foreign exchange reserves (i.e., cure its balance of trade deficit), what you actually produce a very different result. That result is massive inflation, which devastates the purchasing power of millions of Sierra Leoneans, making their Leones buy less and less of increasingly expensive imported goods -- making them poorer and poorer and inflation escalates. That means fewer and fewer S/Leoneans are able to afford to buy expensive imported goods. Which, in turn, means that shops which sell imported goods -- SCOA, UAC, A. Genet, Kingsway, BATA -- no longer have enough customers who can afford to buy their increasingly expensive imported goods. And therefore, they go out of business. That is exactly what happened in SL after the IMF-instigated devaluation of the Leone in 1979 unleashed a catastrophic deterioration in the value of the Leone.
"But it the IMF fraud known as devaluation in SL did not just t ruin the consumer industry in SL. It also ruined the manufacturing industry inside SL. When the IMF-instigated devaluation generated massive inflation that devastated the purchasing power of millions of Sierra Leoneans, they could no longer afford to buy locally manufactured goods as well. In other words, they become very poor. So, who was going to buy the goods manufactured by our local industries? Foreigners? Not a chance! So, just like the foreign companies like UAC, SCOA, A. Genet selling imported goods that S/Leoneans could no longer afford to buy, local manufacturers also were forced out of business because impoverished S/Leoneans could no longer afford to buy their goods either. So, the manufacturers who were closing down laid off their employees -- increasing the number of S/Leoneans who have become impoverished.
"And that is exactly how the fearful economic tsunami known as the vicious cycle of poverty took hold of Sierra Leoneans over the past 30 years or so and drove them into depths of poverty not matched anywhere else in the world. Here's how the vicious cycle of poverty destroys an economy, as it destroyed SL's economy: First, inflation (caused in SL by IMF-instigated devaluation) leads to low purchasing power for S/Leoneans, leading to weak demand, leading to poor sales by suppliers, leading to the closing down of suppliers, leading to unemployment, leading to low incomes, leading to lower purchasing power -- and the cycle restarts, leading to weak demand, and so on)."
I received the above explanation from Moh'm Jalloh himself in 2005 after I read his article in Awareness Times where he explained in great detail WHY the IMF's devaluation destroyed the economy of Sierra Leone and made paupers of previously middle-class Sierra Leoneans. ("How the IMF Fooled the SL Government Into Impoverishing Sierra Leone). After reading it, I had wanted to know from Moh'm WHY the IMF would defraud the SL government.
And there you have it, KKW: You should now see that when you said you agreed with Moh'm from this point onwards, you really meant to say you agreeD with him totally, since, like him, you locate the root cause of the economic problem of our country with the entry of the IMF into our economy.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - NOT REALLY ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Same Story
To: All
Date Posted: 11:39:49 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: nc-71-1-209-107.dyn.embarqhsd.net at 71.1.209.107
Message:
Jalloh (FBC), how many times are you going to recount this same old story about your "academic prowess" at an undergraduate school in a third-world college such as FBC in the 1970's on the internet?
What purpose does such self-serving praise serve to the general public? To indicate to the gullible public that you know what you are talking about now, relative to economics, in the 21st century?
Humility has its place in the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge.
And self-praise is no recommendation. Remember that!!
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - NOT REALLY ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Bad Hart
To: All
Date Posted: 14:01:01 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Lef bad hart. No5t to mention colonial mentality and self-denigration.
Learn to respect Sierra Leone's FBC -- it is the oldest Western university in sub-Saharn Africa. Most Nigerians, Ghanaians and Gambians respect it for producing its leaders over the past 100 years.
But you, typical Sierra Leonean with bad hart (extreme envy) want to bring it down just to satisfy your blood lust to do a PHD (Pull Him Down) on another bright Sierra Leonean -- instead of striuving to come near his superlative achievements.
Have you no shame? Or self-esteem? Or national pride?
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: CHRIS
To: All
Date Posted: 22:59:49 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 71.30.181.97
Message:
A country’s currency will tend to lose value, relative to other currencies, if the country's level of inflation is relatively higher, if the country's level of output is expected to decline, has minimal output or if a country is troubled by political uncertainty.
In the case of Sa Leone, first thing is first, output (export) is minimal, so rebuilding foreign exchange reserves has to be secondary, It could go in conjunction with rebuilding exports but not without some serious output.
Check out China’s mountain of reserves, not without some humongous output I might add.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Correction
To: All
Date Posted: 16:48:35 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
That is not the only way a country's currency loses value.
You failed to mention the most important and obvious way that Salone's currency started losing its value --devaluation.
That has nothing necessarily to do with any of the factors you mentioned. Quite simply, it is a mere announcement by a country that henceforth, its currency is now worth less than it used to be worth -- specifically at the rate to which it has been devalued.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 22:59:19 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
KKW, I actually learned some serious economic analysis of the mess our country is in today and for that I thank you very much. I have always felt that no country can develop economically if it does not have a MANUFACTURING base. We need to be producing something that other countries want and not just raw materials. This will give us the external reserves that will support our currency. But how do we do this? Easy, if we can just use our heads.
If Sierra Leone build a car, no one will buy that lemon. They would rather buy from Germany, Japan, Korea and the US. Basically we really cannot manufacture products that even Sierra Leoneans would want. Does this mean we cannot develop? NO! We solve this problem by readjusting our thinking hats. The world already craves our raw bauxite, rutile, iron ore, diamonds, cacao, piassava and palm oil. How about stopping this unprofitable trafficking of raw naterials and BEGIN signing deals with companies that will allow us to export manufactured intermediate products- instead of the raw stuff- that sell more abroad and that will provide manufacturing jobs in the production of said intermediate products? For example, set up factories and employ people to produce cut and polished diamonds instead of rough diamonds. Why? Because a 2 carat cut-and-polished diamond sells more in the Diamond District of New York than the 8 carat rough it was cut from. Instead of raw rutile being shipped out, our factories should be shipping the more Titanium chloride to China, London, New York to be turned to the final product. The same can be said for most of our products.
Now, some people may say the mining companies may tell us to go take a hike. Not so my brothers and sisters. We do not have to exclusively deal with the MINING companies. We need to hire a team of competent developmental lawyers and lobbyists who can get us into the sanctums of financiers, non-tech venture capitalists, investment banks and hedge funds and make them an offer they cannot refuse: You build the factories, we provide the raw materials, tax breaks and labor, and you other fellows, you market our processed intermediates or finished products in the trading houses of New York, Chicago, London and Beijing. And we all enjoy the profits for a long time. You make good money for your stockholders; my people get good manufacturing jobs; my external cash reserves are fine and my currency starts to inch upwards to regional respectability.
Manufacturig, manufacturing...that is the key.
Subject: Re: RE MOHM JALLOH's ECONOMICS - AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
From: seydouba
To: All
Date Posted: 00:57:30 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: gateway.cyberstar.com at 209.239.66.36
Message:
The only wa y that S/l can recover from this current mess is have a website that has all government propose projects then investors/finaciers can assess the viability of the project and then submit application.
Government should consider building Gold refinery as we have an abundant reserve of Gold.
This will back the leone in the world market.
When the Western economy goes SOUTH, finaciers/investors will purchase large quantity of Diamonds and Gold Bullion to protect their wealth and that will help S/L.
Subject: CAN SOMEONE GIVE ME DR. L A LAKE'S CONTACT?
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 19:48:30 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd672247.netvigator.com at 218.102.204.247
Message:
I would like to be talking to Dr. L A Lake to give him some bright ideas for the quick restoration of electricity in the country and I think I know at least a few of the other solutions that could help the president achieve some of his aims.
So, can someone give me Dr. Lake's contact please?
Subject: Re: CAN SOMEONE GIVE ME DR. L A LAKE'S CONTACT?
From: O'toole
To: All
Date Posted: 19:55:08 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
YOU NAR SMALL CACKROCH.
Subject: Re: CAN SOMEONE GIVE ME DR. L A LAKE'S CONTACT?
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 19:58:09 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd672247.netvigator.com at 218.102.204.247
Message:
Mr. O'toole,
You are appearing to be a nuisance on this forum. If there is nothing good in you, please vacate from this forum.
Subject: Re: CAN SOMEONE GIVE ME DR. L A LAKE'S CONTACT?
From: O'toole
To: All
Date Posted: 20:12:13 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
You see this nar the thing way they try for tell you, you do not have the right ask me to vacate from this forum, if no body ask you to vacate why should you cours nuisance nar you middle name.
Subject: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 18:56:57 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd609112.netvigator.com at 218.102.141.112
Message:
Why geologists? This government is embanking on a program they will never complete within their five-year term. Geologists and the rapid restoration of electricity supply don’t add up. As far as the quick restoration of electricity is concern this is not the time for Geologist.
For a country of SL that big and for any group of geologists, outsiders for that matter, to come up with any meaningful geological assessment report detailing major oil deposits, both offshore and in-land will take at least five to ten years. In-land exploration alone will consume at least five years. Now, even this is just a rough estimate, taking into account the availability of the equipments required to carry out the exploration works.
The whole project will involve a lot of things: extensive feasibility study to map out hot spots, logistical arrange to identify type of equipment required and the transportation of these equipment to the sites under consideration, RFP and a host of other technical gimmicks that could leave some of our readers confused.
Now if the Presidential and Public Affairs Minister, Alhaji Kanu, is claiming as quoted from Cocorioko Website:
“…..one of President Koroma’s key priorities set to turn the country around. Mr. Kanu said the government will work with the geologists to actualize their plans for Sierra Leone.”
Then, something must be wrong, either Mr. Kanu don’t know what he was talking about or the whole administration lack the technical ability and know-how to take our country to the next level.
Look, Cocorioko, tell the administration that there are PEOPLE on this forum.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Erica Adams
To: All
Date Posted: 19:59:36 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: ericamonique82@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-074-185-005-235.sip.clt.bellsouth.net at 74.185.5.235
Message:
I really don't understand what you are ranting about. There is nothing wrong with meeting with this group; especially since they had travelled there anyway. I looked up what geologist do just to make sure I wasn't off and this is a great use of resources that is not costing the state anything. There is no quick fix in Sierra Leone, but it doesn't hurt to lay out a road map to the future. Electricity is just one priority, that doesn't mean there can't be any other priorities. Additionally, you are just one person and one opinion. Apparently, the president and those he has appointed to various positions believe it was worth hearing what is working in another West African nation. Sierra Leone has a lot of work to do and there is nothing wrong with learning from your neighbors. Local governments do it all the time. If they want to improve their transit system they travel to a state with a good system. If they want to make improvements in their school system, they travel to a state that is doing well. Some Sierra Leoneans need to get the chips off their shoulders and admit they need help. You don't look like a good leader by acting like you have it all together when you don't. If Sierra Leone can turn things around and become a model state, some day they will be sending delegations to other countries and teaching what they have learned.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 21:52:17 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd284157.netvigator.com at 203.218.74.157
Message:
Mr. Adams, let begin to analyze your comments on my article.
You wrote:
\
"There is nothing wrong with meeting with this group; especially since they had travelled there anyway."
Yes! You are right; there is nothing wrong in meeting anybody for matter. But how did they travel to SL and who invited them in the first place, and why so early? What is the rationale behind there presence in SL. Did anyone ask for a geologist to visit the country? Are there no Sierra Leonean Geologist who could have done the preliminary investigation and ask for experts support if needed?
You also wrote:
"I looked up what geologist do just to make sure I wasn't off and this is a great use of resources that is not costing the state anything."
Well I don't have to check up for the works of a geologist because (I don't want to say this) I am one of them. And I know we don't need any outside geologist at this point in time. Do you travel one to two kilometers to look for food outside without checking your kitchen for what you want to go out to buy in the first place?
"There is no quick fix in Sierra Leone, but it doesn't hurt to lay out a road map to the future."
You are wrong, as far as the restoration of electricity is concern, and if the December target is to be met, we need a quick fix and I do not think that even the best geologist out there could us to achieve that.
We need a road map, no doubt, but it has to be well planned and sustainable, not something that cannot be sustained.
"Additionally, you are just one person and one opinion."
Yes, you got it spot on, and that's why we need someone like you, who can logically raise enquiries for further insight.
"Local governments do it all the time. If they want to improve their transit system they travel to a state with a good system. If they want to make improvements in their school system, they travel to a state that is doing well."
This is applicable in well developed countries and it is not a sustainable road map for a country like SL. What is sustainable is to identify the major areas that require immediate improvement and send out students with a clear purpose and support to learn these trades in the best countries that offers them, give them the incentives to go back to the country to implement what they learnt. China, adopted this approach and even today they are still doing it; so why can’t we use similar approach. The indigenes are the only ones who can bring lasting development to the country not even the so-called World Bank investors/looters/exploiters.
Look! I am not expecting EBK to perform magic overnight. What I want is a structured, systematic, and well planned approach to any thing his administration does within this five year term.
I have always said that we cannot blame the Government alone for the down fall of SL, everyone is at fault and I still hold this even today.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Erica Adams
To: All
Date Posted: 22:43:16 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: ericamonique82@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-074-185-005-235.sip.clt.bellsouth.net at 74.185.5.235
Message:
I would imagine their invitation came as a result of EBK's recent visit to Senegal. I also would imagine they came as a part of President Wade's delegation to Sierra Leone. Most importantly, I would imagine they came as invited guests.
I have seen different groups propose to form associations like engineers and nurses on this forum so they can collectively offer their services and knowledge to sierra Leone, I haven't seen anything posted for geologists; perhaps you should propose this for your fellow Sierra Leoneans who share your occupational background. Your objections seem to be based on the fact that you feel overlooked.
In terms of the December deadline, I don't think that is a long-term or sustainable plan. I believe that is an immediate fix that will be implemented but other measures will still need to be investigated for the future. I doubt that much of their recent discussion with these geologist focused on the December deadline since I would imagine most of that plan has already been developed.
The common theme I observe on this forum is that people want things done and they want them done the way they think they should be done. Some people elect officials and others are the officials. Since neither of us are the elected officials, the most we can do is support those who have been elected to do the job.
Lastly, I am Mrs. Adams, not Mr.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 23:33:24 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd280067.netvigator.com at 203.218.70.67
Message:
Mrs. ERICA Adams thanks for the correction.
I you have noticed, I've just started posting on this forum recently, I never knew about it and I am certainly not aware of the call to form an Engineer's Association.
I am a Geotechnical Engineer by trade. I have a Mater's degree in Bridge and Tunnel Engineering and have just acquired a second master's degree in Civil Engineering. So I can't call for the formation of a geological society, because it is a tiny bit of my actual capability in the field of Civil Engineering.
It would be good if you could lead me to the organizations you mentioned, and formally make an application.
Mrs. Erica Adams, I am tired unconventional and cheap ways our leaders are handling our countries affairs in the continent. They rely heavily on outside help which is extremely expensive, unproductive and never sustainable. Otherwise, Africa with so many resources should have been on the top of the world.
Has the government openly call for Engineers in the Diaspora to come back home, promised them free accommodation, protection and financial incentives to settle down and join forces to develop the country.
I am sure you are not under estimate the weight of the Sierra Leonean Diasporas out there. But how many of them would want to pack their bundles and head for a BLACK HOLE. There has to be some willingness and some offer from the Government point of view to assure the people that they will be protected. That when they are back they will have some protection, accommodation, financial supports and that their wives will not end being one of the concubines of MPs.
This is suppose to be a Government of the NEW ERA in SL which means that we no longer have to use crude means to achieve our goals, because we are (all Sierra Leonean) fully enlightened and knows top management principles--LET US APPLY IT and turn the desert into a world class metropolitan city in six years as it was done in Qatar.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Erica Adams
To: All
Date Posted: 17:36:46 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: ericamonique82@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-074-185-005-235.sip.clt.bellsouth.net at 74.185.5.235
Message:
Check the archives for the month of September and I believe that is where you will find the call for engineers. This should help you with connecting with others on the forum who have expressed a desire to aid in the process of rebuilding SL.
I have questioned the competitive bids process for contracts in Sierra Leone because I question why there is so much external involvement too. The response I got on this forum goes back to corruption. Apparently this hasn't been a business friendly process and I would imagine that would cause some to not even pursue contracts.
I agree it is a shame to have people all over the world becoming educated and then not be able to attract them back home to help build their own country. I really don't know what the solution is but we shall see what this new administration proposes.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 23:18:47 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: anthonysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 218.189.231.87
Message:
Thanks, Erica; I highly appreciate your help.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: O'toole
To: All
Date Posted: 19:42:19 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
AAAAASSSSSS,
You de act lek you miss the slpp bus,well you get for run oooo couse the bus nor day again.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 19:51:53 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd672247.netvigator.com at 218.102.204.247
Message:
I don't understand a thing of the crap you wrote. Could you please put it in decent-man's terms?
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: O'toole
To: All
Date Posted: 20:01:00 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
Are you a sa/leonean? or a white man wanna be?
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 21:58:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd284157.netvigator.com at 203.218.74.157
Message:
Bo, lego me bo, O'toole. I am no whiteman wannabe. I am your true-true brother and so it will always be.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 19:09:08 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib230.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.73
Message:
He is President of Sierra Leone. What are you!
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 19:19:12 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd278108.netvigator.com at 203.218.68.108
Message:
Look, my friend I am hurt, you are foolish and extremely stupid, we are talking substance here for the benefit of our country.
He is the president so what? Does that make SL belongs to him alone. For God's sakes, talk with substance for once in you life time.
When SL is suffering, the president lives in luxuries whilst the masses suffer. Whose sides are you, the president or the masses?
Don't be a knucklehead.
Subject: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 18:52:32 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd609112.netvigator.com at 218.102.141.112
Message:
Why geologists? This government is embanking on a program they will never complete within their five-year term. Geologists and the rapid restoration of electricity supply don’t add up. As far as the quick restoration of electricity is concern this is not the time for Geologist.
For a country of SL that big and for any group of geologists, outsiders for that matter, to come up with any meaningful geological assessment report detailing major oil deposits, both offshore and in-land will take at least five to ten years. In-land exploration alone will consume at least five years. Now, even this is just a rough estimate, taking into account the availability of the equipments required to carry out the exploration works.
The whole project will involve a lot of things: extensive feasibility study to map out hot spots, logistical arrange to identify type of equipment required and the transpiration of these equipment to the sites under consideration, RFP and a host of other technical gimmick that could leave some of out readers confused.
Now if the Presidential and Public Affairs Minister, Alhaji Kanu, is claiming as quoted from Cocorioko Website:
“…..one of President Koroma’s key priorities set to turn the country around. Mr. Kanu said the government will work with the geologists to actualize their plans for Sierra Leone.”
Then, something must be wrong, either Mr. Kanu don’t know what he was talking about or the whole administration lack the technical ability and know-how to take our country to the next level.
Look, Cocorioko, tell the administration that there are PEOPLE on this forum.
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: lawlawde80
To: All
Date Posted: 04:03:41 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: lawlawde80@yahoo.com
Entered From: 68-184-42-3.static.oxfr.ma.charter.com at 68.184.42.3
Message:
Mr Anthony Sisay your postings really sends the rightful signal that you are not only a true Sierra leonean but a professional by career and in thinking. Except for Mrs Erica who keep engaging you in this all important topic that i personally find interesting, the rest of the other commentators are out right STUPID. This is the problem some of us face in this forum, when you discuss something pertinent, people come of on you with abuses. You cannot critic EBK or his government, you will be labelled something else. This is the world of COCORIOKO FORUM and everything about APC should be positive otherwise............
Subject: Re: WHY GEOLOGISTS? LOOK! COCORIOKO, TELL EBK ABOUT PEOPLE HERE
From: TYPO ERROR IGNORE THIS - ANTHONY SISAY
To: All
Date Posted: 19:01:20 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd609112.netvigator.com at 218.102.141.112
Message:
forget this and ready the top one.
Subject: SLPP, COLD FEET ?
From: al khan
To: All
Date Posted: 18:08:17 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: alhajie@comcast.net
Entered From: c-76-111-98-64.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.111.98.64
Message:
It is a disgrace for the SLPP, party not to show up on the innugration. What this is tell us, is the the party is not thinking about the good future of the country. It is a sad mistake they have taken. This will hunt them in the next general elections.They fail to realize that we are all s/leoneans, no matter what, and in-times like this despite political differences we should all unite. Now, what this is telling me is, never support the SLPP, As they have a different motive.
Subject: Re: SLPP, COLD FEET ?
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 05:23:25 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
We was there en masse and participated in the national event. What a handful of disgruntled elements from the last executive of the SLPP did is not a reflection of the deeds and wishes of the majority of the membership.
I know a great number of our SLPP brothers that attended and were amazed that it was so properly organised save the heatwaves that saw so many people wanting medical attention.
Stop your generalisations - JJ Blood and his likes are not the SLPP - they want to hang on to their silliness. If there is a bone to contend, take the appropriate steps. They have made themselves helpless. I bet you will soon see them doing that which should have been done. Why did we try to have an injunction on the pronouncement of the final results - why did we try to get the courts attention on that? Why can't we do the same if we feel our people are being victimised and their livelihoods taken? How silly for the few to think their failed policies and strategies that cost us the election loss will be taken seriously.
We as a party will regroup and reinvent ourselves for the national good and try to be a formidable opposition.
Subject: Re: SLPP, COLD FEET ?
From: TALK TRUE.
To: All
Date Posted: 19:11:21 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
OH MAN LEF THE ENGLISH TALK TEMNE WANTEM.
(innugration)(What this is tell us)(It is a sad mistake they have taken)
Subject: SLPP, COLD FEET ?
From: al khan
To: All
Date Posted: 18:06:32 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: alhajie@comcast.net
Entered From: c-76-111-98-64.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.111.98.64
Message:
It is a disgrace for the SLPP, party not to shoe up on the innugration. What this is tell us, is the the party is not thinking about the good future of the country. It is a sad mistake they have taken. This will hunt them in the next general elections.They fail to realize that we are all s/leoneans, no matter what, and in-times like this despite political difference we should all unite. Now, what this is telling me is, never support the SLPP, As they have a different motive.
Subject: Re: SLPP, COLD FEET ?
From: Salone Police
To: All
Date Posted: 18:19:09 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: salonepolice@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-75-53-196-165.dsl.hstntx.sbcglobal.net at 75.53.196.165
Message:
But Mr. Al-Khan, should ruling parties address legitimate issues raised by the opposition or must the ruling party simply label the opposition "unpatriotic" and "despicable"? I think what will drive our country forward is our ability as Sierra Leoneans to address compalints raised by other Sierra leoneans in a fair and balanced way so as to ensure justice. Until there is justice in dealing with every Sierra Leonean (at all levels including access to food, healthcare, employment, and other social services) irrespective of the region of tribe that one belongs to, we would not claim to have been truly developed.
Subject: WELCOME
From: Allgood
To: All
Date Posted: 17:38:06 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: h27.78.29.71.ip.alltel.net at 71.29.78.27
Message:
SIERRA LEONE
Subject: Re: WELCOME
From: Get some Backbone Salone !!
To: All
Date Posted: 05:26:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 5ac25f31.bb.sky.com at 90.194.95.49
Message:
I think that signboard should be reomved/replaced with immediate effect.If I were a visiting businessman I would wonder what sort of passive and couch-potato people plead for help and not corruption on billboards at their national ports???? It would actually encourage me to try and hoodwink Sierra Leoneans even if that was not my original intention.
I once drove into the state of Texas from Atlanta while visiting the US (from the UK) and was terrified by the billboards at the roadside of the highway that read: " DONT MESS WITH TEXAS" , "DONT ARRIVE ON VACATION AND LEAVE ON PROBATION". That is the sort of billboard that is capable of having a deterent effect on potential trouble-makers, not wimpy, spineless and passive statements that embarrass us.
Subject: Re: WELCOME
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 21:11:30 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Please don't corrupt us ....because we can corrupt ourselves just fine, thank you!
This cynical undertone ends with EBK.
Subject: RE: TO STUPID WINSTON KABIA BY BAD HART AND TRUE!!
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 17:19:23 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
Posted by Bad Hart on November 17, 2007 at 10:47:26:
In Reply to: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH posted by Londoner on November 17, 2007 at 10:31:54:
Winston Kabia, aka Londoner, as usual, you missed road. Wehn you useed the handle, BASCO, to talk to yourself that Mohammed Jalloh is the one posting as Saloneman, SGK, Ronaldino, Ethelbert Johnson and IMF, you did not nail it.
You missed the other names Jalloh is using today. Here they are: Pele, Basco, Lala, Londoner, Karim, Kamara, Anthony Sisay, Was Kalle, Reuters News, Quoted from Sources, ALPHA SAIDU BANGURA, Chuk Dem, Aminata Dumbuya, atanimA ayubuD.
Hahahahaha, your obseession with the brilliance of Moh'm Jalloh has turned you bad hart losers into crase man dem -- every where you turn you see his image chasing you! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHJEHSDBNHEYEHEYEHEYEHEYEYEYHEYEHEEEEEEEEEEE
Follow Ups:
Re: To Stupid WINSTON KABIA - True 11:15:52 11/17/07 (0)
-----------------------------------------------------
I do not think this is called for! Why should I get my self inviolved in a thing I have no hands on experience?
I will not use another handle other than Chez Winakabs Europe and Truth. I stopped using 'Truth'about four months ago. I do not have to justify myself to you that I did not use the handles you mentioned in your trash against me above. I have no fear of humanity but respect where it is due. I do not have any problems with mr. jalloh and if i do, he knows I do not have to hide under another moniker to attack him.
I demand an unreserved apology for your trash against my person!!
Subject: Re: RE: TO STUPID WINSTON KABIA BY BAD HART AND TRUE!!
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 19:16:57 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib230.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.73
Message:
The ignorance portrayed here is not characteristic of Chez Winakabs Europe. Chez is a business man who is business-minded that I will bet my life would not say such a crap on a forum such as this that has been read by most President's of Sierra Leone,including the current President, International diplomats and dignetaries from Sierra Leone and abroad. He has character that will disallow his personality from going down such childish route. I will bet my life on it that this is not Chez Winakabs Europe ideas or character displayed.
Take a good look my friend:
Subject: Kororioko Proprietors are saboteurs do you agree?
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 16:07:15 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib230.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.73
Message:
"What is the Difference Between a President and a King?Both presidents and kings are heads of state, but they reach their positions in very different ways. Numerous types of government can be presided over by a president, ranging from constitutional democracies to dictatorships. Kings can also work within a variety of political systems, including parliamentary governments and absolute monarchies. The differences between the two political leaders are important, and are sometimes used to highlight differences between governments as well.
A king is a head of state who inherits his position from his family. The female counterpart of a king is a queen. He is part of a monarchy which may stretch back for many generations. The king is ruler for life unless he abdicates, and is usually revered as the sovereign leader of his nation. In some countries, the king acts as an absolute ruler over his people, in an absolute monarchy. In other nations, the monarch is more like a figurehead, and political decisions are made by elected and appointed officials such as ministers and members of parliament. In nations which have retained their sovereigns, the king and his relatives are called the royal family, and special honors are accorded to them.
A president is an official who is elected, either directly by the people or through a representative system such as the Electoral College. The president usually has a set time limit on his or her term, and some nations also limit the number of terms which a president can occupy. As head of state, he or she participates in the running of the government, and usually has veto power over bills proposed by the legislature. The president also appoints cabinet officials.
In most cases, a president is also associated with a democratic system of government in which all citizens may actively participate in their nation's politics. The president is one of many elected officials who work together to lead the country with the input of the people. A king is also perfectly capable of serving in this position, but when most people thing of kings, they think of an absolute monarchy.
In some cases, a dictator may take the title of president. This designation is usually technically incorrect, since most dictators intend to rule for life, and often pass the position on to children or favored people in their political parties. Since a “president” in this context has no term limits, and is usually not associated with a democratic system of government, most nations do not recognize dictators who call themselves “presidents.”"
Subject: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: FODAY MANSARAY
To: All
Date Posted: 15:12:41 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-64-127.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.64.127
Message:
Mr. Lets concentrate on the issue. First of all, why SLPP’s including Kabba did came THREE hours late to the ceremony. Why did SLPP give cold feet to the people of Sierra Leone? Answer those questions.
Secondly, I am confident that I am more educated than you. Certainly, I can deliver on all levels of competition, comparatively to your dismal life's accomplishment. Where were you to donate your academic Intelligence and common sense to keep the SLPP from been thrown out of office by the so called not educated people? If you are so confident of yourself, don’t hide behind the curtain. You tribalist Foool lu muku.
Let me give you some clues. SLPP will be on the defense for a very long time. We are the masters of re-invention to keep Sierra Leone moving. Don’t get mad. Just say thanks to the dedicated sierra leoneans to brave the wickedness of enemies of progress.
Have you really thought about what SLPP did to Sierra Leone? You, Kabba’s and the rest of the gang’s education, what can you show as proof that your fathers did not waste THEIR time educating you. Kabba had in his resume UN high ranking official, Jona, special envoy, Leigh and the list goes on. What can you say about all of these failures? How can you explain this to our youths and future generations? Kabba and
The SLPP stop the war? That is the worse bull crap I EVER HEARD. How can they not stop something they started?
When APC was illegally thrown out of office, we the people with conscious never resist change. We knew we had to take corrective measures. Rest assured Sierra Leone will move forward.
Please concentrate on the issues.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: Ansu Kaikai
To: All
Date Posted: 01:27:15 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: ansu@eden.rutgers.edu
Entered From: ool-18e415b2.dyn.optonline.net at 24.228.21.178
Message:
Foday Mansaray, this is a public forum and I want to advise you to stop writing because your english is so mediocre. Look at what you wrote 'First of all, why SLPP's including Kabba DID CAME three hours late to the ceremony'. Please consult with Pabs your remote control the next time.
This english is not good enough for a 'mortgage banker'(lie-lie) and someone aspiring to be deputy bank governor in Sierra Leone. I want to admonish you to calmly remain in your cocoon as a small time mortgage broker in New Jersey and leave better people to decide. You are half baked and half education is dangerous.
9li and someone aspiring to be deputy bank governor.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: Ansu Kaikai
To: All
Date Posted: 01:25:40 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: ansu@eden.rutgers.edu
Entered From: ool-18e415b2.dyn.optonline.net at 24.228.21.178
Message:
Foday Mansaray, this is a public forum and I want to advise you to stop writing because your english is so mediocre. Look at what you wrote 'First of all, why SLPP's including Kabba DID CAME three hours late to the ceremony'. Please consult with Pabs your remote control the next time.
This english is not good enough for a 'mortgage banker'(lie-lie) and someone aspiring to be deputy bank governor in Sierra Leone. I want to admonish you to calmly remain in your cocoon as a small time mortgage broker in New jersey and leave better people to decide. You are half baked and half education is dangerous.
9li and someone aspiring to be deputy bank governor.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: Ansu Kaikai
To: All
Date Posted: 01:08:29 11/19/07 ()
Email Address: ansu@eden.rutgers.edu
Entered From: ool-18e415b2.dyn.optonline.net at 24.228.21.178
Message:
Foday please try to write good english. Look how clumsy your statement is 'Why SLPP's including Kabba did came THREE hours late to the ceremony'. Is this the english a 'mortgage banker'(lie-lie) and somebody who wants to be deputy bank governor speaks? It is so mediocre. We are the Athens of West Africa so please remain in your attached mortgage broker cocoon in New Jersey and leave better people to decide.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: Ta Tay SU
To: All
Date Posted: 15:24:51 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
Did you read SLPP'S PRESS RELEASE WHICH STATE REASONS BEFORE THE EVENT AS TO WHY THEY WILL NOT ATTEND? DO YOU THINK THAT DISMISSING SLPP SUPPORTERS FROM THEIR JOBS DUE TO POLITICAL REASONS IS OK? THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT THEM TO DO? THE PRESIDENT DOES NOT HAVE TO APPOINT THEM TO ANY NEW JOB BUT DO NOT TERMINATE THOSE EMPLOYED ALREADY DUE TO POLITICAL CALCULATIONS.
rESPECT THEIR REASONS FOR NOT ATTENDING AND THEY THEY ACTED.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 15:47:38 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
Mr Ta Tay: If the party thought president koroma had acted ultre varis, in dismissing employees, then the appropriate recourse was to challenged the sacking in court or your SLPP parliamentarians should take up this issues. But are they good enough?
Boycotting a state occation that was attended and commended by the world leaders make the party looks silly and could not win them any friend or sympathy.
I think you need to get rid of your current executive, frankly they are no good.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET. SIERRA LEONE MUST MOVE ON
From: freedom rules
To: All
Date Posted: 10:58:18 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: freedom@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
I dont think it was a wise political move by slpp. but in a democratic society evry one has a right to boycott an event. they stood by what they believed in an dboycotted it. I woudl rather respect a political rival that stands by his belief than one that acts different and believes somethign else or one with no belief an dkeep changing ships just to get some fry fry.
Subject: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: Titi
To: All
Date Posted: 14:49:16 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
"Many Sierra Leoneans at home and in the Diaspora felt that the SLPP was just making lame excuses to demonstrate their poor gamesmanship and characteristic streak not to ever accept defeat."
Foday mansaray and Kabs Kanu: Please respect the opinion and views of the opposition parties, be it SLPP or any other opposition party. You very seldom publish or report on what other parties do. Do not praise them, but try to report their stories as well just as they say it. Do not add to it or deduct from it or distort it!!!
Subject: Re: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: foday mansaray
To: All
Date Posted: 15:22:24 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-64-127.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.64.127
Message:
If there is anything meaningful to report ,we will certainly report it.Check the other 20 newspapers and the International press.What are they saying about the dying Palm Tree? Flush them down the toilet.That is all we are hearing all day long.
Tell the SLPP that I am very sorry. They dont have any chance of returning to power in 50 years.
Mark my word today is 11/17/2007
Subject: Re: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 18:56:22 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
AH FODAY LEF WE. PUNK nar civilize word for APC thug. THE APC slogan na "KAKA Bisness"
Even in the old SLaone it took 27 years befor we go to war. APC STRATEGY NAR FOR FIRE PEOPLE ARREST DEM SAY THEM WANT FOR SET COUP.
Just fire SLPP man dem en lef dem saful. If anch bet one. GBIN KAN KURU NA wan go be.
PUNK. You sabe count to fifty.
Subject: Re: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: Titi
To: All
Date Posted: 15:31:53 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
"That is all we are hearing all day long"
Who is "we?" I am not hearing that. SLPP have been making statement since after the elections; Starting with the violence, intimidation, thuggry, unreasonable dismissals of SLPP memebrs to their recent press release etc. Did you report any of that? No! You are nothing but a biassed punk!
Subject: Re: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: Foday mansaray
To: All
Date Posted: 17:37:43 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-160-74.patmedia.net at 24.225.160.74
Message:
You called me punk one more time.I will teach your Stupid rustic manners a lesson you will never forget.
YOU NIKON PUP"
Subject: Re: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: Titinorlie
To: All
Date Posted: 18:17:58 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: nc-71-1-209-107.dyn.embarqhsd.net at 71.1.209.107
Message:
"YOU NIKON PUP"?
Don't you mean; you NINCOMPOOP?
How ba you day sell camera for NIKON?
Mansaray! lef for shoot. You nor go school? Ar yerri say you go Services Secondary School. Nar true? You learn anything day? PUNK!!!
Subject: Re: Kasb and Foday Mansaray: Respect party's opinions at least!!
From: Titi
To: All
Date Posted: 17:43:18 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
Punk!
You stupid and Rustic too, as you called me.
What next?
Subject: What is the difference between positive and negative charis
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 14:34:57 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib251.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.92
Message:
Greetings my brothers and sisters. Please read questions related to leadership in the link bellow; none are my ideas but the website posted bellow. It is very interesting to see how those who know view things. Read bellow and read more from the following link:
"The laissez faire" leader adopts a "hands off" approach to leadership and will ...
______________________________________________________
"What are the two most basic types of leaders?
From the many studies done during the past one hundred years we know that the two most basic styles of leadership deal with whether a leader focuses on the task at hand or the welfare and satisfaction of the people doing it. Is the leader’s emphasis on production or people? The task leader is concerned with what, how, where, when and by whom the task is accomplished. Various group roles and activities seem to relate this orientation: goal setting, job assignment, information seeking, problem solving, etc. The people dimension concerns itself with group cohesion, member satisfaction, conflict resolution, empathy, and other “maintenance” activities. Interestingly, task and person leadership are readily decomposed into various component roles, a fact that tends to support the “process” theory of leadership. Leadership is something that is done by the group as a whole not always by one person. Indeed, most modern leaders could not possibly handle the diverse demands for leadership thinking and strategizing and therefore employ a cadre of specialists with whom they may consult."
_______________________________________________________There is so much to learn from the link bellow:
Subject: A Ruller and a Leader
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 14:25:56 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ws-lib251.lib.csus.edu at 130.86.14.92
Message:
Both presidents and kings are heads of state, but they reach their positions in very different ways. Numerous types of government can be presided over by a president, ranging from constitutional democracies to dictatorships. Kings can also work within a variety of political systems, including parliamentary governments and absolute monarchies. The differences between the two political leaders are important, and are sometimes used to highlight differences between governments as well.
A king is a head of state who inherits his position from his family. The female counterpart of a king is a queen. He is part of a monarchy which may stretch back for many generations. The king is ruler for life unless he abdicates, and is usually revered as the sovereign leader of his nation. In some countries, the king acts as an absolute ruler over his people, in an absolute monarchy. In other nations, the monarch is more like a figurehead, and political decisions are made by elected and appointed officials such as ministers and members of parliament. In nations which have retained their sovereigns, the king and his relatives are called the royal family, and special honors are accorded to them.
A president is an official who is elected, either directly by the people or through a representative system such as the Electoral College. The president usually has a set time limit on his or her term, and some nations also limit the number of terms which a president can occupy. As head of state, he or she participates in the running of the government, and usually has veto power over bills proposed by the legislature. The president also appoints cabinet officials.
In most cases, a president is also associated with a democratic system of government in which all citizens may actively participate in their nation's politics. The president is one of many elected officials who work together to lead the country with the input of the people. A king is also perfectly capable of serving in this position, but when most people thing of kings, they think of an absolute monarchy.
In some cases, a dictator may take the title of president. This designation is usually technically incorrect, since most dictators intend to rule for life, and often pass the position on to children or favored people in their political parties. Since a “president” in this context has no term limits, and is usually not associated with a democratic system of government, most nations do not recognize dictators who call themselves “presidents.”
Subject: HOORAY LEONE STARS
From: BBC
To: All
Date Posted: 14:12:10 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-140-34-194.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 69.140.34.194
Message:
Sierra Leone goes thru to the group stages of the World Cup qualifying with a goaless draw in Guinea Bissau.
Subject: Re: HOORAY LEONE STARS
From: Ishmael Yillah
To: All
Date Posted: 14:30:46 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-138-26-45.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 69.138.26.45
Message:
Fantastico Leone stars!!!!!!!!1
Subject: SLPP cold feet stuns the nation
From: FODAY MANSARAY
To: All
Date Posted: 13:11:10 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-64-127.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.64.127
Message:
SLPP cold feet stuns the nation
Written by Kabbs kanu
Nov 17, 2007 at 01:13 AM
The nation was stunned beyond words on Thursday when for the first time in the history of the country, an opposition party developed cold feet at the Inauguration ceremony of the incoming President.
The Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) sent shock waves through the nation when they boycotted the inauguration ceremony of President Ernest Bai Koroma . The party said it was protesting against the dismissal of its operatives from government parastatals and departments.The officials in question were the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, J.D.Rogers, Commissioner-General of the National Revenue Authority , John Karimu and the renegade electoral commissioners , Eddie Nyalley and Winston Minah.
Many Sierra Leoneans at home and in the diaspora felt that the SLPP was just making lame excuses to demonstrate their poor gamesmanship and characteristic streak not to ever accept defeat. Sierra Leoneans who talked to this newspaper noted that the SLPP would never have conceded defeat and would have dragged the nation into war if the International Community had not intervened .
"The SLPP must realize that it cannot stay in power forever, especially when it lacks the ability to fulfill its promises to the people ", said some of the Sierra Leoneans. "The people of Sierra Leone had no alternative but to kick the SLPP out of power because it did nothing for them during the 11 years it spent in power. Why should they boycott such a state function ?"
Many decried the lack of game spirit of the SLPP and warned that the party was setting a bad precedent in the nation. "What did they achieve making a mockery of themselves ?", an angry New Jerseyan asked. Whether they went to the occasion or not, it turned out to be grand and their boycott will not make President Koroma rescind his decisions ".
Some other Sierra Leoneans accused the SLPP of double standards and hypocrisy to complain about selective dismissals by the APC. They said that no other party was good at selective dismissals like the SLPP. "In just 11 years of governance by the SLPP, all the government departments and parastatals became packed with cronies of the party and you have to understand a certain language to be able to communicate effectively with others in these government departments and parastatals ", the man complained. He said that the SLPP systematically removed workers who hailed from a particular region in the country.
Many of the Sierra Leoneans who spoke with this paper appealed to the SLPP to accept their defeat and move on in the interest of the nation.
SLPP supporters contacted by this newspaper repeated the complaints launched by the party's Secretary General , J.J Saffa recently --about the alleged selective dismissals and harassment of their supporters by APC fanatics. However, some of them said that the decision to boycott the Inauguration was a bad one that was taken by Saffa and few others without consulting supporters or operatives. They agreed that it was time to forget about the elections defeat .
Despite the absence of the SLPP, the Inauguration was so grand , colorful , exciting and jampacked that people did not miss the SLPP.
Subject: Re: BANK GOVERNOR FODAY MANSARAY PAN DE MIC…!
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 13:51:37 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
BANK GOVERNOR FODAY MANSARAY PAN DE MIC…!
NOR THINK SAY IF EBK FIRE MORE PEOPLE, YOU GO TURN BANK GOVERNOR. YOU GET FOR GET SOME FORM OF FORMAL EDUCATION, STREET BOOKMAN NOR DAY RUN BANK.
You have a very short attention span or history span. This is not the first time that we have had the APC dance by them selves. As a matter of fact that is what you folks are used to. The last time you beat SLPP, you practically grabbed them all and locked them up, made the state into a one party state.
WHAT DOES THE SLPP HAVE TO DO WITH THE INAUGURATION
OF THE KOROMA , KAMARA AND MANSARAY GOVERNMENT?
EBK has not protected the lives, jobs or physical wellbeing of any one outside the APC.
Subject: Re: BANK GOVERNOR FODAY MANSARAY PAN DE MIC…!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 15:12:21 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.149.131.88
Message:
Don't panic my brother, and I suspect that some giggling inside you but bring it out.
You stopped short of pronouncing tribalism. But its too late for you to receive any form of sympathy my friend, so your anger should be kept inside you.
Subject: SLPP COLD FEET( Sierra Leone will move forward.)
From: foday mansaray
To: All
Date Posted: 15:10:32 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-64-127.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.64.127
Message:
Mr. Lets concentrate on the issue. First of all, why SLPP’s including Kabba did came THREE hours late to the ceremony. Why did SLPP give cold feet to the people of Sierra Leone? Answer those questions.
Secondly, I am confident that I am more educated than you. Certainly, I can deliver on all levels of competition, comparatively to your dismal life's accomplishment. Where were you to donate your academic Intelligence and common sense to keep the SLPP from been thrown out of office by the so called not educated people? If you are so confident of yourself, don’t hide behind the curtain. You tribalist Foool lu muku.
Let me give you some clues. SLPP will be on the defense for a very long time. We are the masters of re-invention to keep Sierra Leone moving. Don’t get mad. Just say thanks to the dedicated sierra leoneans to brave the wickedness of enemies of progress.
Have you really thought about what SLPP did to Sierra Leone? You, Kabba’s and the rest of the gang’s education, what can you show as proof that your fathers did not waste THEIR time educating you. Kabba had in his resume UN high ranking official, Jona, special envoy, Leigh and the list goes on. What can you say about all of these failures? How can you explain this to our youths and future generations? Kabba and
The SLPP stop the war? That is the worse bull crap I EVER HEARD. How can they not stop something they started?
When APC was illegally thrown out of office, we the people with conscious never resist change. We knew we had to take corrective measures. Rest assured Sierra Leone will move forward.
Please concentrate on the issues.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET( Sierra Leone will move forward.)
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 18:32:48 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
AH NO SAY YOU DAY KICK YOU SEF RIGHT NOW FOR WAY YOU LEF SCHOOL GO DO BINESS. DE WAN DEM WAE LEARN BETEH BOOK DAE FLY AROUND WITH EBK RIGHT NOW. TEM NOR LATE YATE, YOU STILL KIN GO NAR DEM ONLINE COLLEGE EN PAY KABS FOR TAKE THE EXAM. BY 2009 WE GO YERE BUT DR FODAY MANSARAY.
AH CHUK YOU, YOU VOMIT.
Trust me Governor, when it comes to governance, all Sierra Leonean are the same.
SLPP failed, the people voted them out. The people expected positive change, a government of the entire populace. No what am I talking about? We are talking about the APC in government. The most nervous and paranoid group of people can not have that. Members of the civil service should be left alone to leave in peace. How long have the APC ministers being in office to have a form of assessment and grounds to declare people incompetent? All these folks going around the nation harassing others had there jobs and sense of security during the SLPP regime.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET( Sierra Leone will move forward.)
From: MODERATOR
To: All
Date Posted: 20:34:12 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-160-74.patmedia.net at 24.225.160.74
Message:
This joker should NOT be allowed on this froum anymore.Please don't allow him any more.He is not worth the headache.Let him join Slvia Blyden's Forum.
Subject: Re: SLPP COLD FEET( NA COCORIOKO NA JOKE..)
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 21:55:38 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
NA COCORIOKO NA JOKE.
You think the APC mouthpiece will feed us bullshit and expect people to keep quite.
My language and style may be out of my league but I am just trying to come down to your level. This na de new SLPP. We treated you guys with dignity and respect and had the expectation for you to keep up.
RIGHT ON THIS CHURCH BASED WEBSITE you call respectable Sierra Leonean stupid and “NIKON PUP”. But the fake moderator (alias Foday Mansaray- Governor) did not stop it. You issue terroristic threats against a female Titi, (I will teach your Stupid rustic manners a lesson you will never forget) you did not stop that. IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO TITI, WE KNOW WHERE TO LOOK. PUNK!
You turn around and call me joker?
The next time I show up on your forum I will be holding free English and math lessons.
Subject: The Informal Economy and the Value of the Leone.
From: MR SIERRA LEONE
To: All
Date Posted: 12:29:30 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: h27.78.29.71.ip.alltel.net at 71.29.78.27
Message:
Is there any relation?
Check out this perspective.
Subject: Re: The Informal Economy and the Value of the Leone.
From: CHRIS
To: All
Date Posted: 17:19:50 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: h27.78.29.71.ip.alltel.net at 71.29.78.27
Message:
Informal Economy( Black market, under the table) with other variety of terms "Simply put, is economic activity that is neither taxed nor monitored by government; and is not included in government's Gross National Product (GNP); as opposed to a formal economy."
So if this type of activities are not included in our Measures of national income and output to estimate the value of goods and services produced in our economy, then it does affect the value of our currency the Leone. At one time 1$ = 1L, now that 1$ = 300L, in my estimation the amount of under the table activity has been substantial, not forgetting other factors.
Subject: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: Fan
To: All
Date Posted: 12:04:15 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
From Awareness Times Newspaper in Freetown
COMMENTARIES
Why the Sierra Leone Government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Will Fail
By Mohamed A. Jalloh
Nov 11, 2005, 11:09
One of the first lessons taught to new computer users is "garbage in, garbage out." It is a lesson that the government of Sierra Leone will painfully – and needlessly -- inflict upon the long suffering people of SL if it continues to allow itself to be fooled by the IMF and the World Bank by implementing the latest fraud perpetrated by those two foreign institutions against our country – the cynically misnamed "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper."
According to the IMF and the World Bank -- speaking through their dependable echo chamber, the perennially dependent so-called government of Sierra Leone -- the primary reason why Sierra Leone, a country blessed with relatively more natural resources than most countries in the world, is, notwithstanding, the poorest country on earth, is very simple, namely: Sierra Leoneans themselves, and no one else, are the cause of their own poverty.
Specifically, the IMF- and World Bank-sponsored "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper," states that: "Sierra Leone’s post-conflict economic, social and political rebuilding stems primarily from the aftermath of decades of economic mismanagement, wide-spread corruption, inefficient state control over economic and political activity, lack of investment in critical economic and social areas, and a decade-long devastating civil war, which also severely
constrained the Government’s ability to sustain any reforms."
Carefully omitted in the above-quoted premise upon which the SL government’s entire poverty reduction strategy PRSP is based, is the real truth as to the identity of the culprits responsible for the most enduring spectacle in SL. As most of us know, that sorry spectacle is the plight of Sierra Leoneans as the poorest people on earth despite living in a country blessed with abundant reserves of diamonds, gold, and bauxite, among other plentiful natural resources. The explanation for this puzzle offered by the IMF and the World Bank, and faithfully echoed by their undiscerning dependant, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s government, demonstrably fails to pass the test of validity. For, while it is true that SL has been impoverished by "decades of economic mismanagement, wide-spread corruption," and other factors, it is not true that the SL government is the one which is most responsible for those ills.
The plain truth is that it is the IMF, and to a lesser extent, the World Bank, under the direction of their Western benefactor countries in the G8, which have perpetrated the most widespread corruption and economic mismanagement in SL since its independence. Simply put, the IMF and the World Bank bear the greatest responsibility for the extreme poverty of Sierra Leoneans today. Therefore, any plan intended to reduce poverty in SL must primarily address the corruption of the IMF and the World Bank in SL over the past 35 years, or it would woefully fail. Accordingly, the glaring failure of the SLPP government’s PRSP to address the generation-long pillage and plunder of the SL economy by the IMF and the World Bank guarantees that it will fail to significantly reduce poverty in SL.
In fairness to the accused Bretton Woods institutions and their G8 sponsors, let me adduce the evidence of their gargantuan theft of SL’s natural and financial resources by means of the most notorious of their trademark troika of corrupt economic policies, namely: Devaluation (foreign "aid" and foreign trade being the others).
In 1970, SL’s currency, the Leone, was stronger than the "mighty" U.S. dollar. So, a Sierra Leonean living in his or her country could buy more goods in America with Le 100 than an American living in America could buy with $100. Not surprisingly, it was rare to find S/Leoneans clamoring to flee to America to escape poverty in their native country. Indeed, those S/Leoneans who wanted to send their children abroad to study could readily afford to pay the tuition fees using their savings because our Leone was worth more than the dollar. Moreover, there was electricity in the homes and businesses of S/Leoneans 24 hours a day because the government of SL could easily afford to buy oil for the NPA’s generators, since our currency was stronger than that of the mighty USA. In fact, no S/Leonean would go hungry if he or she had only Le1, because that was enough to buy food for a filling meal. In short, because our currency was strong, we S/Leoneans were living the good life which our country’s exports of diamonds, iron ore, coffee, cocoa, palm kernels, among other exports, made possible. However, that good life to which we had become accustomed, changed dramatically one fateful day in 1979.
On that day in 1979, the clueless SL government of President Siaka Stevens, personified by the like-minded Minister of Finance, Salia Jusu-Sheriif, succumbed to the transparently self-serving proposal of the IMF to devalue our country’s still strong currency. Specifically, the APC government introduced the so-called two-tier exchange rate system which required S/Leoneans to cough up Le 2.50 for every $1 they wanted to obtain from the banks in SL. So, even though SL continued to export the same diamonds, iron ore, coffee, cocoa, palm kernels, etc., as before, the SL government instantaneously – and needlessly -- impoverished every single S/Leonean, in relation to every foreigner, by devaluing the Leone. Thus, whereas before the IMF-instigated devaluation of the Leone, a Sierra Leonean living in his or her country used to be able to buy more goods in America with Le 100 than an American could buy in America with $100, the reverse was the case in the aftermath of the devaluation. The American could now buy more than twice the amount of goods in SL with his $100 than the S/Leonean could buy in SL with Le 100!
Sadly, that is how the long suffering people of SL became victims of the greatest fraud perpetrated by those two Bretton Woods institutions in our country. However, even though the IMF fooled the SL government, they did not fool every S/Leonean. At great personal risk from the notoriously vindictive President Siaka Stevens, I warned the government of SL against impoverishing itself, and more importantly, the people of SL, by devaluing our currency. I did so, while barely out of my teens, and less than a year after graduating from Fourah Bay College, through an article I wrote that was published in the APC government’s own mouthpiece, "We Yone," in 1979. The paper did so only because I had focused on analyzing the dangers of devaluation to the SL economy while avoiding naming the APC government or any government official.
But for our hapless people, it would get even worse -– 200,000 times worse! That is the extent to which successive governments in SL have irresponsibly allowed the IMF, in concert with the World Bank, to devalue our currency from an exchange rate of Le 1 = $1.25 in 1970 to the current disgraceful rate of about Le 3,000 = $1. This happened despite the fact that I again risked my freedom, if not my life, by openly warning the APC government of President Joseph Momoh against further devaluing the Leone, during a public lecture I delivered at Fourah Bay College’s Mary Kingsley Auditorium in 1985, under the brave chairmanship of my long-time friend, Dr. Ade Renner-Thomas, who now serves our country as Chief Justice.
From the above evidence, one conclusion is inescapable: Contrary to the fundamental premise of the IMF and World Bank-sponsored "Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper," the people of SL have been impoverished not by S/Leoneans primarily, as the IMF and the World Bank claim in blatantly self-serving misrepresentation, but by a longstanding cabal of international conspirators headed by the very same IMF and World Bank, and aided and abetted by our own so-called leaders.
Consequently, the first step in reducing poverty in SL must start with addressing the factor that is greatest contributor to the pervasive poverty in our country, by reversing the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in SL – the IMF-instigated serial devaluation of our currency. Thus, the number one priority for the SL government, if it is serious about reducing the searing poverty of our people, should be to restore the value of our once strong currency to its original level. That rate should be: Le 1 = $1.
The IMF and the World Bank, if they are serious about helping SL by atoning for their 35-year pillage and plunder of our country’s resources, should then provide the foreign exchange needed to stabilize the Leone at its new level of parity with the dollar -- just as it had been before the IMF and the World Bank cynically manipulated it to its current level, and thereby precipitated the deterioration in our economy which is most responsible for our people’s longstanding poverty.
© Mohamed A. Jalloh
About the author: Mohamed Jalloh, a Sierra Leonean living in Maryland, USA, has had his views on economics and finance published multiple times since 1994 in The Washington Post, one of the two leading national newspapers in the USA. He first published an article in Sierra Leone’s We Yone newspaper in 1979, entitled: "Foreign Aid: A Curse or Blessing?" less than one year after he became the first Sierra Leonean to graduate with a B.Sc (Hons) Econ with a major in accounting from Fourah Bay College.
© Copyright 2005, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 17:41:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe000039fc3f61-cm000039fc3e61.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com at 99.229.75.232
Message:
I respectfully disagree with this analysis of the reason for the devaluation of the leone.
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: SUbstance
To: All
Date Posted: 18:19:09 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Please state your reasons.
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: Question
To: All
Date Posted: 12:30:28 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
i wonder what "job" Mr. Jalloh was looking for when he criticized the SLPP president of Salone, the IMF and the World Bank in 2005?
Could it be that our resident dumbehs think that he criticized those institutions, as he has criticized the Bank of Salone governor-designate, Mohm was going for the "job" of IMF-World Bank-Sierra Leone-President-rolled-into-One? heheheheheheheheheh
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: Answer
To: All
Date Posted: 12:36:57 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"Could it be that our resident dumbehs think that he criticized those institutions, as he has criticized the Bank of Salone governor-designate, Mohm was going for the "job" of IMF-World Bank-Sierra Leone-President-rolled-into-One?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++h
That is why they remain dumbehs.
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: One track
To: All
Date Posted: 12:26:09 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-152-74.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.152.74
Message:
Talk of Sierra Leone's economy, and he keeps on going about the rate of exchange.Ghana, one night decided that 10,000 cedis should be called 1 cedi, so now 1 USDollar in Ghana is 1 cedi.Likewise, if Mohammed Diallo is not happy with rate of exchange, we could call le3000 a new-leone, thereby USD 1 will be 1 new leone.
After this adjustments, employess will not get paid Le1 million or 2 million, but every payment has to be readjusted.This is more of arithmetic, than economics.
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: Off Track
To: All
Date Posted: 12:34:44 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Your arithmetic does not add up to economics.
The issue is not about form (what you "could call le3000 a new-leone") but one of substance (which, unlike in arithmetic, means a real exchange rate increase in favor of the Leone).
Kapish?
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: gbakanda
To: All
Date Posted: 12:53:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
No amount of speculations AND /OR THEORIES will make the Leone assume value until and unless exports superceede imports.
Subject: Re: THE BRILLIANT MOH'M JALLOH
From: Correction
To: All
Date Posted: 13:02:03 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Not true.
What youm eant to write, perhaps, is that the Leone will strenghten only when there is sufficient fgoreign exchanmge to exceed the demand for foreign exchange.
Yoour mistake is to assume that exports are the only source of foreign exchange. On the contrary, as any Salone man with relatives abroad will confirm for you, cocoa and coffee is not the ONLY for foreign exchange to enter Salone.
Does the word, foreign remittances from Saloneans abroad mean anything to you?
If and when it does, you will finally understand the elementary error in your thinking that "No amount of speculations AND /OR THEORIES will make the Leone assume value until and unless exports superceede imports."
Subject: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 09:48:19 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Guy I do not know you from Adam but I find you the most stupid economist in Sierra Leone! I now recognise that those nutters who do not understand an iota of economics were back slapping you for a post well written.
Kamara my great adversary has so simply put the leones plight in laymans language(see paras below) I was forced to call your attention to it. Imagine if you had sat in front of Berewa and the SLPP front bench and had spewed forth such nonsense? they would have made you Minister of Finance.
'A nation's currency rate is determined by the demand for it's curreny. If a Sierra Leone produces the goods that other nations demand. The value of it's currency increases as nation's need Leones to purchase the goods produced in Sierra Leone.
Unfortunately, Sierra Leone produces no consumer goods that are in high demand outside Sierra Leone. No body is rushing to obtain Leones. Thus in a truly free market system the leone will not maintain its value.'
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 17:24:19 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
Why don't you make it known to all that you are what you are and not Winston kabia. I am taking blame for what I do not believe or subscribe to. have the decency to make it known to all that you are not winston kabia.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 06:28:51 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Winston, I have just seen your post. If Forumites just compare our posts, they can judge for themselves that you are a Brewamite and I post with the rising sun behind me amoungst other things.
You cannot be all these hands. Just chill!
Regards
B
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Tactics
To: All
Date Posted: 12:32:40 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-152-74.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.152.74
Message:
He is not as stupid as you think, and he has some knowledge of the subject.However, he seems to be desparate for a job, and hence he has gone all out.Typical Salone Foolahman
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Dis Nar-crase
To: All
Date Posted: 19:19:27 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-24-98-69-54.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 24.98.69.54
Message:
He is brilliantly insane and consumed with self valued importance that
makes him detached from reality. In short a sociopath.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 12:02:14 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
You know how to remotely tell if a posting is from an APC thug? Read the first line of there postings. It is always an insult on the opposing view. Economics is one field of study though scientific, has the most contradicting views: (schools of thought).
The highest level of civilized language they might use would be to call people stupid.
What would you expect from a political party whose slogan is; “WE NOR MIX PAN KAKA BISNESS”? OWAI OSAI.
Simply read and take the opportunity to respond intelligently.
They know if they keep insulting respectable people in our community, it will get to the point where they will simply stay away from such forums.
BASCO OMAN YOU SEF. AMERICA NOR ABLE CIVILIZE YOU. NAR SO YOU DE LEF YOU TURN BACK NAR SALONE.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Pele
To: All
Date Posted: 10:27:12 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ool-4575eca0.dyn.optonline.net at 69.117.236.160
Message:
Basco,
Mohammed Jalloh is the one posting as Saloneman, SGK, Ronaldino, Ethelbert Johnson and IMF. He is trying to force his voodoo economics down the throats of forumites. But only forumites who have not taken courses in economics will fall for his nonsense. This guy is sick.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: SGK
To: All
Date Posted: 10:53:31 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: sheku-kamara@hotmail.co.uk
Entered From: at 91.84.136.50
Message:
Man you must be confused and paranoid.
I am not related to Mr Jalloh neither have i ever studied Economics in my life. I am only loyal to my country and used my common sense to intervene and highlight areas where i think people are not genuine in their debates.
People in this forum would tell you where i stand since the elections. At times i even have views different from those in the same party as mine. For me, my country is number one.
Subject: Re: To Stupid BAD HART PH,D (Pull Hium Down) DEM
From: Paranoid
To: All
Date Posted: 11:01:16 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
SGK, nor men dem paranoid schizo den ya wit dem PH.D bad hart.
Lek Bad Hart tell Wintson Kabia, Mohm don mek dem all crase -- any sai den turn wae den see sass economics den tink say nar Mohm.
Mohm don mek den crase, for true.
Subject: Re: To Stupid BAD HART PH,D (Pull Hium Down) DEM
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 12:10:03 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
WE GO LISTEN TO YOU WAE YOU GET YOU HIGH SCHOOL DIPLONMA. YOU PARANOID FOR TRUE.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 10:40:21 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Pele, please do not crack me up this afternoon with laughter. Mom is the kind of guy who goes up country and insists in speaking english to his people. And the poor folks would be beeming that their son knows book!
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Londoner
To: All
Date Posted: 10:31:54 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-249-162.cable.ubr05.haye.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.249.162
Message:
You nailed it!
Subject: Re: To Stupid WINSTON KABIA
From: Bad Hart
To: All
Date Posted: 10:47:26 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Winston Kabia, aka Londoner, as usual, you missed road. Wehn you useed the handle, BASCO, to talk to yourself that Mohammed Jalloh is the one posting as Saloneman, SGK, Ronaldino, Ethelbert Johnson and IMF, you did not nail it.
You missed the other names Jalloh is using today. Here they are: Pele, Basco, Lala, Londoner, Karim, Kamara, Anthony Sisay, Was Kalle, Reuters News, Quoted from Sources, ALPHA SAIDU BANGURA, Chuk Dem, Aminata Dumbuya, atanimA ayubuD.
Hahahahaha, your obseession with the brilliance of Moh'm Jalloh has turned you bad hart losers into crase man dem -- every where you turn you see his image chasing you! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHJEHSDBNHEYEHEYEHEYEHEYEYEYHEYEHEEEEEEEEEEE
Subject: Re: To Stupid WINSTON KABIA
From: True
To: All
Date Posted: 11:15:52 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
That was soooooo funny, but very true. guys like
kabia and others are just too pathetic. Typical saloneman -- always trying to pull down smart SIERRA LEONEANS.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Lala
To: All
Date Posted: 10:20:24 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
"Thus in a truly free market system the leone will not maintain its value."
Why did the leone maintained it's value before 1980??
By then, it was linked to the British pound. What were the consumer produce that we ere producing them to keep it linked, stable and stronger than the US dollar?
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Buoy
To: All
Date Posted: 10:50:17 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 65.91.143.4
Message:
The leone was simply buoyed by the export sales from a thriving diamond industry, iron ore, cocoa, coffee and other exports.
Even piassava and ginger were exported. Besides, appetite for imports was not as gluttonous as is so obvious today.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Lala
To: All
Date Posted: 12:44:33 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
How did that changed in 1980????
Subject: Re: EXPORTS BUOYING THE LEONE -- what changed?
From: Nothing Changed
To: All
Date Posted: 11:05:06 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"The leone was simply buoyed by the export sales from a thriving diamond industry, iron ore, cocoa, coffee and other exports."
So, did salone stop exporting diamonds, iron ore, cocoa, coffee and other exports for make the Leone go from Le 0.80 equal $1 in 1979 to Le 3000 equal $1 now?
Subject: Re: EXPORTS BUOYING THE LEONE -- what changed?
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 11:22:42 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Yes! No NDMC, No SLPMB and no Iron ore. coffee cocoa and diamonds can be bought and sold with not a single cent seeing the the banking system. With the NDMC and SLPMB the Salone govt retained the dollars whilst giving the farmers leones. Which means (if MOM is looking in) Di Govament get resarve!!
Subject: Re: EXPORTS BUOYING THE LEONE -- what changed?
From: Lala
To: All
Date Posted: 17:27:46 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-69-229-10-94.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net at 69.229.10.94
Message:
Who was the leader and wnich party was in power? Pa shekie and the APC caused that. How soon people have forgotten? Some of the current voting population were very young to remember Pa Shekie's lagacy.
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 10:55:48 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Thank you my bro. So we have lots of sensible economists on this forum. Grammer School or POW?
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 17:22:29 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
Why don't you reveal to the folrum that you are not winston kabia to clear the maliaise you have created between self and fans of Momh Jalloh? It will be decent of you to make it known to all that you are what you are and not Winston kabia
Subject: Re: To Stupid MOM JALLOH
From: FBC
To: All
Date Posted: 11:00:07 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 65.91.143.4
Message:
FBC and Harvard in Cambridge.
Subject: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Saloneman
To: All
Date Posted: 07:40:08 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
From The Patriotic Vanguard's Comments Page
November 16, 2007
Posted by Mohamed A. Jalloh, Maryland, USA, on 16 November 2007 at 12h23
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Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria,Norge, asks on 16 November 2007:
" ... looking at the intricacies of all the economic factors ,macro and micro, vis-a-vis the export and import,revenue and expenditure how do we stabilise the Leone against, not only, the dollar but all other strong international currencies?"
MY REPLY: Mr. Jallo Jamboria, thank you for your inquiry regarding my article in the Patriotic Vanguard yesterday. You are quite correct in linking the success of any plan to restore the value of the Leone to the flow of SL's import expenditures, export revenues, and domestic expenditure. This is because at the most basic level, the exchange rate (the price of the Leone in terms of another currency, as is true of the price of any good or service), is determined by the interaction of the demand for foreign currency and the supply of foreign currency.
At any given level of demand, the exchange rate will be determined by the supply of foreign exchange to meet that demand, all other things being equal. Therefore, the twin critical factors in restoring the exchange of the Leone to parity with the dollar will most likely be (1) ensuring the availability of sufficient foreign exchange within the banking system to meet the legitimate demand by residents of SL and (2) ensuring that the supply of foreign exchange is directed only to legitimate demand by SL's residents.
If those two conditions are met, it becomes possible to manage the exchange rate around a benchmark target such as parity with the dollar, with a high degree of confidence. Thus, in direct answer to your question, stabilizing the exchange rate of the Leone against major currencies involves managing the supply and demand for foreign exchange in such a way as to minimize the fluctuations in the rate of exchange.
However, the policy Jonathan Rose and I presented in our Jan. 30, 2007 article entitled "The Revaluation of the Leone" is not one of stabilizing the Leone, but actually one of (first) restoring its value to that at which it was before it was first devalued in 1979 during the APC-SLPP coalition government led by the leaders of both parties, President Siaka Stevens and Finance Minister Salia Jusu-Sheriff, respectively.
As I alluded in my Patriotic Vanguard article of Nov. 15, 2007, critiquing the surprising comments of the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL, the stability of the Leone is a secondary goal when the Leone's value has been devastated by more than 375,000 percent over the past thirty years of so of IMF-instigated inappropriate devaluation policies in SL's economy. Therefore, to say that the stability of the Leone (a minimum of fluctuations in its exchange rate) is more important than the actual rate of exchange — as the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL is reported to have stated — is to demonstrate a surprising unfamiliarity with the critical foreign exchange policy needs of SL at this moment.
Finally, restoring the value of the Leone is not limited to restoring it only against the dollar. As Jonathan and I made clear in our article, we propose that the Leone's value be restored against all major currencies. Our particular reference to the dollar is to focus on a single widely used currency in the knowledge that restoring the Leone's value against the dollar would similarly restore it against other major currencies (absent, specifically, a catastrophic deterioration of the dollar's value against those other major currencies). The specific steps we outline for doing so can be found in our article cited above.
Best regards,
Mohamed A. Jalloh
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: SGK
To: All
Date Posted: 09:45:32 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: sheku-kamara@hotmail.co.uk
Entered From: at 91.84.136.50
Message:
I am not an Economist, but common sense tells me that the exchange rate mechanisms and inflation are inseparable variables. One cannot do without the other.
Therefore, Mr. Jalloh is right to question the gentleman's comment that as long as inflation is stable, the exchange rate is not important.
How can a country whose inflation has been increased exponentially compete with the world market if we don't try to reduce it? Yes it is possible to reduce inflation as the gentleman stated. Even the layman knows that.
As for John Manna's analysis, i think it is just an oppotunity for him to use Dr. Samura Kamara's mistake in order to sabotage the new government.
Please Forumites, don't forget that Manna doesn't want to see the success of this government. This guy is not patriotic after reading is postings at the S.L.P.P forum, i can only conclude that this guy's interest is only S.L.P.P and not Sierra Leone.
I like reading his postings, but please fellow debaters always try to analyze Manna's postings and try to pinpoint the motives behind them.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Victror
To: All
Date Posted: 10:31:30 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
How can a country whose inflation has been increased exponentially compete with the world market if we don't try to reduce it? -- SGK
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SGK: That is exactly the elementary economics point the Bank of Salone Governor designate surprisingly missed totally! For true, even a layman understand s that it is possible for inflation to be reduced. In fact that is the task that the U.S. central Bank, the Federal Reserve says is its main preoccupation -- reducing inflation and keeping it from rising.
And yet, here we have a Salone central Bbank governor saying it is not possible to control inflation through echange rate changes. Did Dr. Samura Kamara not understand that the astronomical inflation that we have now was started by an announcement by Jusu-Bandele Stevens' Finance Minister, Sheriff SAheriif, that the Leone which used to be strionger than the dollar was now Le 2 to one dollar and from there it as Momoh's floatation to Le 5 to $1 and now 20 years later, it is Le 300 to $1?
Me say, if the governor can't understand that, I sorry for Salone in the next 5 years of APC rule. It will be Tatu en Yawa runing the economic policy of Salone.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 09:53:13 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
The Dalasi in Gambia strengthen from 36 dalasi to 18 dalasi. You know what happened? The Gambians and the tourists complained as goods became expensive.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: SGK
To: All
Date Posted: 10:23:36 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: sheku-kamara@hotmail.co.uk
Entered From: at 91.84.136.50
Message:
What you have just said, if it is true is unrealistic. Possibly there are malpractices going on there now at an alarming rate. You know what African politics is all about. Don't be fooled my brother. Your above statement is practically infeasible in the western world. Man think critically.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Check Your Facts
To: All
Date Posted: 10:20:12 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"The Gambians and the tourists complained as goods became expensive."
It is impossible for the Ganbian currency and the effect be the same for both foreigners and Gambians. That is simply not possible. Why? Because the increase in the exchange rate in favor of the Ganbian currency has OPPOSITE effects on Gambians and foreigners:
1. For gambians, imported goods inhside Gambia become LESS expensive.
2. For foreigners, local goods become MORE expensive.
Therefore, it is totally impossible for the change in the exchange rate of the Gambian currency to have the SAME effect on gambians and foreigners. Go check your facts.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: RONALDINO
To: All
Date Posted: 10:35:11 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
That is why some of these ecomonic books you read like Lipsey do not translate to the African problem. now, the Gambian problem arose because alot of gambians abroad send money home. A hundred dollars use to get you 3600 dalasis but when the dalasi strengthened you could now get 1800 dalasi. But prices of goods and services did not fall. One Jul Brew remained at 25 dalasi.....You see the problem!!
The same happened in 1996 when the dollar was 'falling' against the leone. People were grumbling that monies sent home did not cover the things normally bought.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: FooLooLoo
To: All
Date Posted: 10:57:10 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
". A hundred dollars use to get you 3600 dalasis but when the dalasi strengthened you could now get 1800 dalasi. But prices of goods and services did not fall."
Just like your earlier claim, your above claim is completely impossible. my friend, stop embarrassing yourself with this kind of repeated display of ignorance.
A stregnthening of the exchange rate of a local currency ALWAYS leads to a fall in local prices, all other things being equal. This is because imported goods are bought with foreign currency. So when the Gambian currency's exchange rate drops, the amount of gambian dalsis needed to buy the same quantityy of foreign goods also drops.
If the cost of importing the good is now lower, how is it possible for the price at which it is sold to remain the same if there's no monopoly (a single supplier) in the market?
My friend, your ignorance of economics is embarrassing!
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 11:33:43 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Gron pig, this is not reading economics but living it. I have just returned from a three months project to Banjul and Dakar. Better still if you have Gambian friends ask them about their 'good problem'
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Sabi Nor Geh Worry
To: All
Date Posted: 11:07:04 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
"A stregnthening of the exchange rate of a local currency ALWAYS leads to a fall in local prices, all other things being equal. This is because imported goods are bought with foreign currency. So when the Gambian currency's exchange rate drops, the amount of gambian dalsis needed to buy the same quantityy of foreign goods also drops.
If the cost of importing the good is now lower, how is it possible for the price at which it is sold to remain the same if there's no monopoly (a single supplier) in the market?"
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: Ethelbert Johnson
To: All
Date Posted: 08:31:43 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
I don't think anyone can argue with the statement that returning value to the Leone is much more important to the people who are suffering from sky-high inflation than maintaining stability of the Leone at its present extremely high exchange rate of Le 3000 to $1.
Thererfore I must say that the bank governor designate is wrong to say that what is most important is maintaining the stability of the exchange rate. And Mr. Jalloh is absolutely right in bringing that to his attention so that he can made the adjustment in his thinking.
storing thenstability
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh Delivers Another Lesson in Economics
From: IMF
To: All
Date Posted: 09:36:35 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
What bothered me about Samura's comments is that he seems happy to let the status quo continue. The policy of do-nothing that he is saying we should do, is that not what Rogers the ex-governor was doing? Can't Samura see that continuing those failed policies (which I suspect are the IMF's marching orders to the SLPP cabal of Kabbah and Berewea in exchange for loan ) will just leave the Leone rate where it is?
Maybe somebody should tell Samura that there is a new shefiff in twon -- the APC and that the same old same old do-nothing "stalization" noshi-noshi of the IMF will not cut it.
Subject: WE DID NOT MISS SLPP.
From: karim
To: All
Date Posted: 06:58:47 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: karim@hotmail.com
Entered From: pool-72-66-26-251.washdc.fios.verizon.net at 72.66.26.251
Message:
SLPP JJ BLOOD AND HIS CREW DID NOT ATTEND THE INAUGRATION , SO WHAT ? THIS HAS JUST SHOWN US THAT JJ BLOOD AND HIS CREW WERE JUST THERE TO STEAL.
Subject: Re: WE DID NOT MISS SLPP.
From: Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 07:49:32 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-207-145.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.207.145
Message:
You did not miss them but they are making a statement that 2 months after the election thuggish and brutish rogue elements of the APC are brutalizing SLPP , foreigners and perceived enemies of APC and the President has done nothing to stop this criminal behavior.
Where is the leadership. Get on the TV and say something. Is Ernest koroma a president of Sierra Leone or APC & Northern Sierra Leone.?
Subject: Re: WE DID NOT MISS SLPP.
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 08:15:49 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Good! Mr. Kamara, you are the type we need on this forum to learn from—someone who is able to compare and contrast and give credit where it belongs without prejudice.
We need a president who can protect all of us including foreigners, regardless of their backgrounds. There are no two-way sides to it.
Our president must be a humble servant of the nation and should be able to even hear the crawling of the ant.
Subject: Re: WE DID NOT MISS SLPP.
From: Was Kalle H
To: All
Date Posted: 09:47:52 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
JJ Blood does not need to be protected he already has his own personal possee of Thugs who were ready to beat up my Good Friend at Pios Forays restaurant. But the picked on the worng person because if he had picked on me, Freetown would have been too tight for he and I.
Subject: Re: WE DID NOT MISS SLPP.
From: kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 11:40:14 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-207-145.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.207.145
Message:
How about the SLPP and foreigners who don't have thugs.
Subject: S. Leone leader promises "zero tolerance" on graft
From: Reuters news
To: All
Date Posted: 05:29:54 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 154-66-ftth.onsneteindhoven.nl at 88.159.66.154
Message:
S. Leone leader promises "zero tolerance" on graft
By Katrina Manson
FREETOWN, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma promised "zero tolerance" on Thursday for corruption in his country after a leaked government report said rampant official graft had swallowed up donor funds.
Speaking at his formal inauguration in Freetown, the 54-year-old former insurance executive called for a change of attitude in the West African state to leave behind nearly two decades of poverty and conflict.
Koroma won a tense presidential ballot in September as the opposition candidate and was quickly sworn in the same month, promising to heal political and social divisions still lingering after a 1991-2002 civil war in the former British colony.
"I have no doubt, that like the Phoenix, we shall rise from the ashes of war and rise like the proud nation that we are, the Athens of West Africa," he said in a speech in the packed national stadium in Freetown.
On the eve of the ceremony, attended by several West African presidents, a leaked confidential government report commissioned by Koroma himself revealed chronic levels of corruption in the preceding administration of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
"We will exercise zero tolerance towards corruption," he told the stadium audience, drawing cheers and applause.
"Corruption is not only a matter for the leaders and heads of government institutions, it is equally a matter for everybody... unless we change our attitude, we shall never be able to create the prosperous country that we dream about."
Cheering supporters of Koroma's All People's Congress (APC) party dressed in its red and white colours crowded the national stadium, where traditional dancers entertained the audience in sweltering heat before the start of the ceremony.
The formerly ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), unseated in the vote, boycotted the inauguration in protest of Koroma's replacement of a pro-SLPP central bank governor.
The presidents of Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, Gambia and Burkina Faso were among the guests at the ceremony.
REFORM AGENDA
Koroma also pledged to reform the judiciary and civil service, remove barriers to investment and improve the lives of ordinary people in a country ranked the second poorest in the world last year by the United Nations Human Development Index.
He promised "to provide an environment where things get done and people are accountable for success or failure".
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) sent a public letter to Koroma urging him to make a break with a past that has included one of Africa's most brutal civil wars in which drugged child soldiers slaughtered civilians and hacked off their limbs.
"Five years since the end of the armed conflict, the government has failed to stem rampant corruption, which has for decades robbed Sierra Leoneans of their basic human rights," Peter Takirambudde, HRW's Africa director, said in a statement on the eve of the inauguration.
"The time of turning a blind eye has passed: President Koroma's administration must face the problems... head on."
Information Minister Ibrahim Kargbo said the government would follow up on the leaked corruption report and the Anti Corruption Commission would take appropriate action as required.
"Senior members of the past government tampered with state funds, donor funds, and the international community is appropriately most unhappy about it," he told reporters, adding the report would be made public in due course. (Additional reporting by Christo Johnson, Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Michael Winfrey)
Subject: Evill SLPP is finished
From: Quoted from sources
To: All
Date Posted: 05:27:34 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 154-66-ftth.onsneteindhoven.nl at 88.159.66.154
Message:
"Five years since the end of the armed conflict, the government has failed to stem rampant corruption, which has for decades robbed Sierra Leoneans of their basic human rights," Peter Takirambudde, HRW's Africa director, said in a statement on the eve of the inauguration.
"The time of turning a blind eye has passed: President Koroma's administration must face the problems... head on."
Information Minister Ibrahim Kargbo said the government would follow up on the leaked corruption report and the Anti Corruption Commission would take appropriate action as required.
Subject: Re: Evill SLPP is finished
From: Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 05:50:24 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-207-145.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.207.145
Message:
Ask Peter if the rampant corruption in New Jersey and other areas of USA has been stemmed. Mr Koroma has spoken and we are waiting to see the results. If he can singlehandedly end corruption in Sierra Leone , he will be destined for a second term and a hero in Africa.
Subject: LORD, LORD, LORD HAVE MERCY.
From: ALPHA SAIDU BANGURA
To: All
Date Posted: 05:02:45 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: SAIDUBANGSO@AOL.COM
Entered From: pool-138-88-7-76.res.east.verizon.net at 138.88.7.76
Message:
The word inauguration simply means bringing in a new administration.
The president Koroma administration was brought in sometime in Steptember,2007, immediately after the run off elections. President Koroma took the oath of office and had been discharging his duties as president for a little over two months.
Since, the day president Koroma subscribed to the oath, Alhaji Ahmed Tejan Kabba became an ordinary citizen of Sierra Leone.
Can a sensible person, please, tell me the rationale behind, president Koroma taking the oath of office for the second time and private citizen, Alhaji Ahmed Tejan Kabba handing over the staff of office to president Ernest Koroma?
Subject: Re: LORD, LORD, LORD HAVE MERCY.
From: saidu
To: All
Date Posted: 21:11:01 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: sa@hotmail.com
Entered From: pool-72-66-26-251.washdc.fios.verizon.net at 72.66.26.251
Message:
THE PEOPLE ELECTED THE APC TO HANDLE THEIR BUSINESS, WHEN ALAKITOR SAIDU AND HIS CREW UNDERSTANDS THAT THE COUNTRY WAS LEFT IN A SORRY SHAPE BY HIS SLPP PARY THEN HE WOULD SHUTUP. YES WE DAE READY FOR GO NAR POYO BAR BUT BIFOE WE LEF WE GO MAKE SURE SAY LIGHT WATA EN GOOD SCHOOL DEN DEA IN NAR SALEONE.
Subject: Re: LORD, LORD, LORD HAVE MERCY.
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 09:19:39 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
We had to. You see, we did not get to bring out the EKUTE' WHITE HORSE the first time.
We like to enjoy ourselves, since we took power; we have been traveling to all countries that we had dreamt of visiting.
Just wait, we would soon renovate the Binkolo headquarters and the POYO party will start.
Bo you sef! you know how long we bin day wait for this?
OWAI! OSAI! WE NOR MIX PAN KAKA BISNESS.
Subject: Re: LORD, LORD, LORD HAVE MERCY.
From: med
To: All
Date Posted: 19:01:48 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-72-82-204-163.cmdnnj.east.verizon.net at 72.82.204.163
Message:
that was aprivate event. we need to do it for the public and world to see.
Subject: Dipping My Toe in the Waters, Gentle Ladies
From: atanimA ayubmuD
To: All
Date Posted: 04:16:40 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
My name is atanimA ayubmuD, a Temne man from Makeni. This the first time I am posting in this forum. Before that I was peeping and learning a lot from the interesting posts. I hope you gentle ladies in this forum will not be too hard on me when I continue posting after this as I have a hidden agenda. I plan to bring many topics later. My favorite one is to warn you JCs to avoid creating other Alimas when you descend among our young, vulnerable sisters back home.
I am studying to be a nurse. Later, I hope to be a doctor. In case you are wondering about my name, I am a real Sierra Leonean. I am also a real man. But I have a little secret. Let me tell you about it now.
You see, ssometimes I fool people I want to use by spelling my real name backwards. Then they think I am a woman -- and I can post anything I like without fear of being attacked by the men because they think I am a a woman! LOL
Subject: Re: Dipping My Toe in the Waters, Gentle Ladies
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 07:48:58 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Sir, that was crazy funny. I really see no condescension at all in your post. I think it was hilarious. At times we do need to lighten up, you know. By the way I am all woman with two X chromosomes in all my cells and I do not have an agenda. I am multi-interested in myriad topics. I really do not mind being attacked to defend my positions as I would others. I will always give respect to other forumites even those I disagree with because posting for me is not easy. You should see the number of edits I go through before getting the confidence to post...
Thanks for making me laugh hard, my brother.
Mirthfully,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: Dipping My Toe in the Waters, Gentle Ladies
From: atanimA ayubmuD
To: All
Date Posted: 08:12:12 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Mirror Namesake,
I thank you for seeing humor in my serious posting. LOL
You did get one thing right about it, though. That was when you said that you saw no condescension in it. That's true because I did not intend to convey any, thank you. I must say, in turn, that, surely, you did not mean to address me as "Sir?" seeing that I told you I am a woman, do you now, mon ami(ie?)
As you can tell, like you when you read my post, I am now dying with laff. Or as that wickedly funny Iscadri lawyer would say: ROTGLMMFAO
Subject: Re: Dipping My Toe in the Waters, Gentle Ladies
From: Summer
To: All
Date Posted: 08:08:05 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: summer@hotmail.com
Entered From: c-71-199-140-97.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 71.199.140.97
Message:
Aminat,I appreciate your words of advice. I am glad we have other women in the forum who can express themselves. It seems as if when ever a woman tries to express themselves to educate what going on with young girls in our country, these men get all bent out of shape and start calling names. They always come to the assumption that the person posting the comment is like these women. It is a shame that some of you Men think about our women that way. And use nasty words to discredit them. Maybe we have to come together and stick by our words to improve the situation of Young Women in Sierra-Leone, regardless of of the negative comment from some of these Men. Thanks Aminata
Subject: Re: Dipping My Toe in the Waters, Gentle Ladies
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 08:22:24 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Thanks a mill Summer for your kind words. I can only see good in bringing this issue to light and hopefully changing a few attitudes along the way. Have a wonderful Saturday.
Subject: test
From: test
To: All
Date Posted: 03:37:56 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
test
Subject: Today is 17th November 2007
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 01:14:03 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.60
Message:
What is the problem with the official website of the President. I am sure EBK understands the importance of the internet this days. Whatever technical difficult they are facing, I will only wish that it get resolved as soon as possible.
Koroma has very good intentions and messages, and this must dessiminated to dampen the creation of rumor mills.
Subject: Re: Today is 17th November 2007
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 01:18:06 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
MOININA,
I think you have to be patient and give State House some time to do their work.I believe YOU WOULD NOT LIKE THEM TO SURFACE WITH A WEBSITE THAT EVERYBODY WILL CRY DOWN. I am sure the people there know what they are doing.
Subject: Re: Today is 17th November 2007
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 07:49:44 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Well you see, this is what I've been saying, no research has been done at all. Otherwise Cocorioko's web designer should have been consulted instead of a possible back door consultant. This is what happens when you use Mr. Trader to buy you a server, he will bring you an empty box with USB interfaces.
Subject: Re: Today is 17th November 2007
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 01:47:08 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.60
Message:
Kabs,
I am as patient as ever. What happened to the previous website? In most countries the change of government will not affect the website of the President.
Subject: Re: Today is 17th November 2007
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 07:51:46 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Albert, have you started feeling the heat already?
Subject: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: FINANCE MAN
To: All
Date Posted: 22:23:25 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: makeni_one@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-114-235-58.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.114.235.58
Message:
I am not sure if this gentleman (Mr. Mohm. Jalloh) understands certain principles of economics. The premise on which he based his concerns for the appointment and assuming of office by Dr. Kamara are either outdated or have no bearing on what needs to be done in order to bring the Leone into parity with the dollar. His references of those activities that took place in the past cannot be functional today or may be worthless in today’s global world. The information he used can only be used as historical references where several models can be developed based each on a country’s situation and expectations. For example, functional Reaganomics in the eighties would not be functional in today’s U. S. fiscal policies, either monetary or when trying to stimulate economic activities. Most financial economists around the world would love to get up one morning and find their currencies trading in parity with the “might o” dollar, but it is more difficult than one can imagine. Countries like Canada, France and Mexico, to name a few have far better economies than Sierra Leone yet find the strength of their currencies trading below the dollar. Mind you, these are developed economies, not developing ones’. It took Canada almost thirty-two (1975-2007) years to either trade in parity with the dollar and recently exceeding it. I am available for consultation…I get results.
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 06:05:43 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-207-145.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.207.145
Message:
You are right that outdated theories may be irrelevant today.Some of theories that apply to developed nations might not apply to underdeveloped nations.
A nation's currency rate is determined by the demand for it's curreny. If a Sierra Leone produces the goods that other nations demand. The value of it's currency increases as nation's need Leones to purchase the goods produced in Sierra Leone.
Unfortunately, Sierra Leone produces no consumer goods that are in high demand outside Sierra Leone. No body is rushing to obtain Leones. Thus in a truly free market system the leone will not maintain its value.
Whether this has anything to do with DR Kamara's ability to manage bank is another issue.
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: BASCO
To: All
Date Posted: 09:20:36 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Eh Kamara, so you know economics? Mom J is so stupid. Thank God he is no where near our Financial Bodies!! Does Mom not remember how much the Italian Lira was to the pound and the Spainish wata wass money before the uro boosted them up? Were these countries not first world countries?
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 11:57:46 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-187-207-145.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net at 71.187.207.145
Message:
Basco, Where have you been. i hope running our economy. We need help. Yes , I am a graduate in business economics. The Leone will only appreciate when Sierra Leone produces consumer goods that the developed nations want. It is a demand and supply issue. Sierra Leone exports rough diamonds not cut diamonds.The leone value is not affected. The country's reserves might be affected if any these monies enters the banking system.
Italy and Spain produce products that are cherished and valued world wide. their currency are apt to be affected by demand & supply.
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: Kalos
To: All
Date Posted: 10:20:39 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-70-17-228-81.balt.east.verizon.net at 70.17.228.81
Message:
Basco, you again! This is too simple for any person to understanding. At the moment, Sierra Leone's export capability is almost zero, even a bright fellow like Mom J will fail in trying to make a convincing argument about improving the worthiness of the LEONE without addressing this issue first. The modalities mentioned in Mom J's piece are somehow outdated. We live in a dynamic and fluid capital economy; the Sierra Leone economy is updated via the global economy in nano intervals.
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: Basco
To: All
Date Posted: 10:52:44 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Kalos, we have to be producing!!! FX for our Cocoa,timber,coffee,gold, diamonds going through the BANKING SYSTEM!!!!!!!!!!!! When a diamond buyer takes a million dollars to Kono to buy diamonds, how much of it sees the banking system? 2% at most when he pays export duties! So when we bluff say we export 200 million dollars worth of diamonds almost natin pass na bank! And MOM JALLOH says he has the answers?
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: Kalos
To: All
Date Posted: 11:05:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-70-17-228-81.balt.east.verizon.net at 70.17.228.81
Message:
I agree with you, MOM missed the fundamental issues that need to be addressed. However, he is not a stupid fellow as you previously mentioned; like most of us, he erred. I know he is very comfortable with himself to revise his piece in the near future.
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: PHD
To: All
Date Posted: 05:14:42 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-152-74.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.152.74
Message:
He just is trying to condemn Dr Kamara, by brining purely academic arguments.Is he looking for a job???
Subject: Re: MOHM HAS NO CLUE
From: Jay
To: All
Date Posted: 07:52:00 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-134-164-223.range86-134.btcentralplus.com at 86.134.164.223
Message:
Funny that's what i thought.
Subject: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 20:44:58 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Thugs could also be extended to include any group of people or even an individual who are (is) always defensive and could not take criticisms even when at fault and retaliate by either using force or verbally abusive languages without reasoning.
Even on this forum you could find such thugs. These are the people who are building nuclear shield around the APC to repel any thing thrown at them, whether good or evil.
But a few years ago they forgot that they were in power, starting from the Steven’s regime to the hand picked JM alias “JT,” until the sexy guys took over lead by our now miserable “Mr. S.” What the APC achieved then, nothing, but plunging the country to the bottom of 200 others on the poverty scale. They fueled the war by trading the weapons they were given to protect the country to their enemies.
Now these easily identifiable thugs on this forum have forgotten all of these. But to avoid thugs attacks, I am not going to call names on this forum, instead I will us initials which could mean anything, like “FP!” for example which could mean “Free Pussy!” or “AM,” for “anus movement,” “KSK’ for “kooks slave Klan,” the list goes on.
I respect EBK in the sense that he is in the APC to effect a BIG CHANGE in the mind set of the notorious APC’s trade marks: Rubbery, mismanagement, lawlessness, unlawful killings—our brutally murdered late Bank Governor for example, tribalism, nepotism, etc.
Okay! I am going for my wife’s MBA graduation photos.
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 00:44:35 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
One of the few AM's pushing you between you and your SLPP between the rock and the reinforced concrete structure of a 200 storey building.
Being civil with your postings will help you a long way in putting your ideas across, if you have any at all.
You wrote -
"These are the people who are building nuclear shield around the APC to repel any thing thrown at them, whether good or evil."
Mr. Sisay, are you telling us that your SLPP also has thugs throwing "evil" at APC members? Is this an admission that you have thugs in the SLPP that we can now call SLPP thugs?
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 07:24:11 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Albert Moinia,
Don't interpret the words the way you read them-use a different dimension. There may be parables that could require people with IQs to interpret.
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 00:16:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Anthony Sisay, this is the FP thug you alluded to in your piece. Free WHAT? Mi man, you get issues! I actually enjoy sparring with some of you over substantive issues. it is just the cheap, assinine and gratuitous attacks against the new president that I take exception to. If you want to lay in on EBK, at least let there be coherence and merit in your indictment because folks here are gonna make you defend your position. It is this tough head butting that you call 'THUG ATTACKS'. I look at it more like a rumble in the FIT YIE KORNAH.
By the way Anthony do you know how many people you have cussed and 'thug-attacked' on this forum on behalf of your SLPP? Bra lef noh. Why U dae try for fen me plaba?
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 07:31:53 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Fen Plaba? You na me man. In fact you are one of the few guys that have posted substance on this forum. Keep your cool; man!
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 07:38:30 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
A'ight bra, it's all good. All I said was in jest. Let's chill.
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: ANTHONY SISAY YOU NEED HELP
To: All
Date Posted: 22:22:38 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
BOY YOU NEED HELP...REAL BAD!
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Dr. Help
To: All
Date Posted: 00:27:41 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
He truly needs HELP, BIG TIME. I only hope he realize it and very soon.
Subject: Re: THERE ARE "APC" THUGS ON THIS FORUM!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 07:29:45 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Was that a threat, Mr. ngee ngee?
Subject: Tribute to Lucky Dube
From: Sheku Sheriff
To: All
Date Posted: 18:32:52 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-180-164-17.hsd1.mn.comcast.net at 69.180.164.17
Message:
Though it may seem late, please read my tribute to Lucky Dube at www.segbwema.blogspot.com
Subject: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: BRA ENVIABLE
To: All
Date Posted: 18:19:55 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
The inauguration of Ernest Koroma as president of Sierra Leone was the final phase of a democratic exercise conducted to wean a misruled country from authoritarian rule. As the nattily-dressed president waved his staff for onlookers to see, the successes scored by post-war Sierra Leone brought some joy in war-beaten Freetown. With a smile lighting his face and a white hat perched on his head, the elected president represented the relief of a nation that spent eleven years wearing a grimace on its face. War has taught Sierra Leone that even a rickety democracy is preferable to an ossified dictatorship. Transforming that rickety democracy into a sustainable political system is the challenge before us as a nation. Politically speaking, an awakened population can make large contributions into the democratic kitty by refusing to be fooled by politicians.
The SLPP is understandably nursing the wounds it sustained after Ernest Koroma's meteoric capture of the presidency. If it reconstitutes itself with aim and concrete goals, the SLPP has the ability to retake Sierra Leone from an APC that has never shown the needed skills for democratic politics. The odds Ernest Koroma had to surmount in order to lead the party, pointed to an APC still held in backwardness by the shibboleths of its ugly days. Unfortunately for the party and luckily for the SLPP, President Koroma's "Northern Mania" shows the APC is in no hurry to be a far-sighted party.
The reinvention of the SLPP can take several phases. The party can begin to retool itself by setting up a secretariat tasked with public relations duties. Politics without political propaganda is a mug's game. Now that it is in power, the APC cannot be expected to look at Sierra Leone with the eagle eyes it used to reveal the failures of the SLPP. The SLPP can switch roles by being a sharper critic engaged in a deeper rapport with the same population the APC sensitized to gain power. Press releases like the ones issued by Mr. Jusu Saffa are fine, but a news organ acting as a parallel chanel of opposition, will surely catch the nation's attention when the APC turns popular sentiments into antipathies. Knowing the APC as I do, it is only a matter of time before imaginary rats begin to sell fertilizers with the skills of unrepentant sinners.
Subject: THE AGONY OF DEFEAT
From: KING LOGGY
To: All
Date Posted: 02:21:15 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
Psychology 101:
Emotions influence perception, learning, and memory and empathic, altruistic, and creative actions.
Subject: Re: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 23:54:06 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Bra Enviable, I am gonna bet you half the barrel of Coors I am getting wasted on tonight that your party is not gonna make it in '07. The wounds of SLPP misrule are just too raw, too gaping and still smarting inspite of the endorphins. Right now all Ernest has to do to win re-election is throw over his head a green Halloween costume with a palmtree etched on it, jump behind the fence at State House and say BOO to Sierra Leoneans. They will vote for him in droves! Bra, SLPP is the boogie man that terrifies Sierra Leoneans every night. I can see some leeway for your party in 2007...if you fellas change your ways:
1) Keep the nuts in your party locked up in the attic. Every time JJ Blood opens his mouth, the favorability rating of the SLPP takes a nose dive.
2) Stop the empty propaganda like the one you are advocating. Solid, pragmatic, common-sense proposals to solve the country's planning are better than the hot, divisive 'Northernization' rhetoric coming from the Poyo tree.
3) Stop insulting the intelligence of Sierra Leoneans. Our people are inherently fair. Just fess up that your party was a sty of corruption and incompetency. Ask for their forgiveness and promise to do better next time and move on. That is a better course than digging up crazy stats about non-existent SLPP growth rates, and crowing about inflation-chopped $180 million dollars (supposed SLPP surplus) in the bank (and being very quiet about the hundreds of millions of dirty money your party hoarded in bank vaults abroad).
I have many more suggestions to get SLPP ready for prime time in time in 2007 but that iced Coors beckons me my friend.
Subject: Re: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: Fen Plaba 2!
To: All
Date Posted: 00:54:24 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
Fen Plaba:
Bra Enviable, according the first sentence of the second paragraph in his message, appears non-partisan:
"The SLPP is understandably nursing the wounds it sustained after Ernest Koroma's meteoric capture of the presidency."
The very first sentence of your message, however, seems to portray the Bra as an SLPP. Am I missing something here?
Subject: Re: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 01:17:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Fen Plaba 2! I kinda like your name bro. Bra Enviable is SLPP, not because of that one statement you mentioned, but because of his declaration. He himself said that he suckled from the SLPP nipple. He is an intellectual, sharp in thought and respected by his peers on this forum. I honestly have profound respect for him even as I needle him over some of his stances. He, Candid Opinion and Brabanxx are some of my favorite forumites....
Subject: Re: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: Kalos
To: All
Date Posted: 10:54:10 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-70-17-228-81.balt.east.verizon.net at 70.17.228.81
Message:
Thanks Fen Plaba for keeping checks on BRA ENVIABLE. BRA is SLPP and a very proud one. What makes BRA unique is his often objectivity; he is one of the few forumites that is not afraid to level the SLPP or APC when the opportunity presents itself. He also advances intellectually stimulating discussions that are needed for our emerging democracy.
Subject: Re: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: WHAT IF?
To: All
Date Posted: 23:35:53 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
"The odds Ernest Koroma had to surmount in order to lead the party, pointed to an APC still held in backwardness by the shibboleths of its ugly days."
Bra Enviable:
Will it make more sense if the above statement reads more like this?
The odds Ernest Koroma had to surmount in order to lead the COUNTRY, pointed to an APC still held in backwardness by the shibboleths of its ugly days.
Subject: Re: SLPP: HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN APC FLOUNDERS
From: Salone Observer
To: All
Date Posted: 21:56:48 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: lanfia@j2ltd.net
Entered From: at 65.183.2.101
Message:
WHAT IF,I believe Bra Enviable is making reference to the hurdles EBK had to overcome in order to remain Leader of his Party. Do you recall the Court battle with the fossilized rump of the Party? Hence the reference to " the Shibboleths of it`s ugly days."
Subject: APC Thugs Contniue Violence
From: Sheku Kallon
To: All
Date Posted: 17:21:23 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: shekukal@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-105-124-181.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 76.105.124.181
Message:
APC THUGS CONTINUE SPATE OF VIOLENCE AS THEY ATTACK SLPP MP KONUWA. Police Chief for the East, Asst. IG, Elizabeth Turay, has confirmed that APC supporters attacked the person of Hon. Moses Konuwa during his visit to constituents and supporters in the Tongo area. AIG Turay noted that she had dispatched a police team to the site of the incident and suspects had been arrested and charged accordingly
Subject: Re: APC Thugs Contniue Violence
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 19:02:11 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Liar, liar pants on fire!
Sheku, are you still smarting from the walloping Brabanxx gave you this afternoon? Illiterate propaganda is dangerous to your health....especially on this forum!
Subject: Re: APC Thugs Contniue Violence
From: Really?
To: All
Date Posted: 18:16:17 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
Really?
Subject: THE NEXT BANK GOVERNOR
From: FINANCE-INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MAN
To: All
Date Posted: 16:34:19 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: MAKENI_ONE@YAHOO.COM
Entered From: c-76-114-235-58.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.114.235.58
Message:
I once wanted to be the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, and I know I can do a great job at being one. Had I been appointed to the position of being its head, I would have brought radical changes that would be in line with the president’s agenda. My goal would have been to institute realistic monetary policies, work toward eradicating or bring corruption to a manageable level as well as work with these outside institutions that are weight heavily on our growth and decision making abilities. I am ready…My academics, employment and real world savvy make me the ideal candidate. I get results…plain and simple. I am available for consultation.
Subject: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 12:42:04 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 165.155.200.149
Message:
Nearly everybody on this forum has expressed horror over the tragic death of Alima, supposedly at the hands of a Lebanese Sugar Daddy. Even those who were appalled at the indiscriminate mob violence directed at the Lebanese had few kind words for the alleged perpetrator, Mr Amuday Basma.
I am hereby begging all those kind gentlemen who have bellowed against the death of Alima to please NOT indulge in the same Sugar Daddyism that resulted in the death of this poor girl.
I want to remind the kind gentlemen of the forum that when you return home with fistfuls of dollars, pounds sterling, euros and kroners, in the unforgiving poverty of the motherland, you will practically look like handsome superstars to the poor girls back home. Even if you look like yesterday's dog vomit (I say this respectfully) and couldn't get snap from the hot babes abroad, your dollars will give you an aura of irresistible cool and sexiness to the poor struggling dames back home. When I was back home, I actually saw grandpas in their 40s and 50s flash their dollars and take advantage of very young 'titis' a shave legal of Puba!
All I am saying is you cannot condemn the crime that snuffed Alima's short life and then indulge in the same lecherous cradle robbing when you go home.
I thank you for reading this post,
Sincerely,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: CHUK DEM.
To: All
Date Posted: 10:04:54 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 148.177.1.218
Message:
This is not a JC problem. JC’s have the old firewoods to deal with.
THIS IS A LEBANESE PROBLEM.
We always miss the point when talking about the Lebanese problems in SLeone.
These crimes are world wide, but the true issue is that these French fries sellers and taxi drivers are above the law in SLeone. The name (basma) could be implicated in all the major problems in that nation, from blood diamonds down to prostitution. It is painful to say but prostitution is the least of their crimes.
They treat their poor Sierra Leonean employees like slaves and get away with it. Those of you who are familiar with the Technical and Girls school junctions would recall an otherwise beautiful mad lady always sitting there. She used to work for a Lebanese family who took her to Lebanon and brought her back in that state. The others never made it back.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: O'toole
To: All
Date Posted: 12:16:08 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
I thank you CHUK DEM, I think we have a lot of leb's lovers around.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 18:40:13 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Good to hear one of our ladies' voices on this forum. Ms. Amina, keep it up. Encourage the other sisters to also turned up here, we certainly need you to reproduce and replace the thugs and some of the would-be rapists out there.
In my childhood, I remember a similar Alima's incident, where a Salone boy forced his huge prick on a 13 yr old and killed her in the process. No finger was raised against the Salone boy as far as I can remember.
So it is good that you are raising the alarm bell. Warn them my sister.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 18:58:12 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Thanks Brother Anthony Sisay for your compliments. I am deeply touched by your kind words. I appreciate the input, even of those who disagree with me. My purpose is not to score points but to openly discuss a topic that would normally be swept under the carpet.
Respectfully,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 19:05:49 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
You are welcome.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: MATAMA HEH MAPOHTOH.
To: All
Date Posted: 16:18:59 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-143-225-68.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 69.143.225.68
Message:
Another hole open, these girls are dying that we come good for tourism, bkack on black at least. was at embassy they are having a record year as thousands are sending for visas from US AND CANDA. Many of you girls is that not how you came to america by the blessings of JCS?
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 18:32:29 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Thank you for shining a spotlight on the mentality of some of the merchants of this unsavory practice. Mind you these girls shouldn't be the 'price' of the sex tourism that goes on around christmas. These girls are sisters and daughters too, you know..
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Summer
To: All
Date Posted: 08:07:06 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: Summer@hotmail.com
Entered From: c-71-199-140-97.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 71.199.140.97
Message:
I appreciate your words of advice. I am glad we have other women in the forum who can express themselves. It seems as if when ever a woman tries to express themselves to educate what going on with young girls in our country, these men get all bent out of shape and start calling names. They always come to the assumption that the person posting the comment is like these women. It is a shame that some of you Men think about our women that way. And use nasty words to discredit them. Maybe we have to come together and stick by our words to improve the situation of Young Women in Sierra-Leone, regardless of of the negative comment from some of these Men. Thanks Aminata
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: MATAMAH HEH MAPOHTOH
To: All
Date Posted: 05:58:30 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-143-225-68.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 69.143.225.68
Message:
The guys themselves are too greedy and are always in a hurry. These girls may not have eaten any good food since daybreak, so ask them first if they want to eat anything take them out spend some dollars feed them well and especially you guys on viagra or ciallis, you know the medication makes you act funny, so when the moment is right you have to be ready and not go crazy and please go slowly so that you don't get into an accident.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Mohamed A. Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 13:58:03 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ool-44c6af1f.dyn.optonline.net at 68.198.175.31
Message:
Aminata I commend you for touching on this issue. I know that the viagra and cialis popping lot won't like it, but tough. I have heard rocking-chair status sugar-daddies talking about their sexual exploits, during their visits back home; as if it is a pilgrimage all Sierra Leonean men should make in their life time, or will miss the entrance to heaven period. I go down there once or twice a year, and try to see what the noise about the "Karma Sutra" trips is all about. So far, i haven't seen anything spectacular or mesmerizing about the young sisters back home. Believe me I am not trying to knock them down.It's just that I do not see or feel, what makes other men go on a ravishing rampage when they get there. Could it be that the partners they share a roof with can't jump start them anymore, or the cherry is being rationed, or worse withheld completely? I have lived in New York City for two decades. A city which has women from all races, cultures, with variant physical features, skin tone, and an increasing number of them with flexible sexual orientation (some of whom I have known on a personal basis). Probably why the entertainment scene in freetown these days, does not grab my attention. I do go to the so called hot spots out there with my point man, to shake off some of the stress life in the diaspora has to offer. Even the club scene vibes don't feel right to me. I know it is now a different era, and things obviously will not be the same. However, i wish it wouldn't have come down to JCs using those places as leeching grounds, to sexually exploit our very young Sierra Leonean sisters and brothers as well,in the process of having a good time; instead of playing the role of mentors, giving guidance to a young population which has already lost its collective innocence, growing up in the midst of a barbaric civil war. I believe many of us who hit the entertainment happenings witin the mid 70s up to early 80s will agree that it was mostly about having clean fun. The environment down town and elsewhere wouldn't be like a RED LIGHT DISTRICT. Life wasn't that of paradise, but today's troubling trend, make me appreciate those days. What is happening now is immoral. It is indeed a sad reality. Men traveling to Sierra Leonean with the primary purpose of preying on young girls and boys, some of whom are young enough to be their grand-children. Of course, the situation has always been there, but back then the Koros were more mature and older.You will see them at joints like Kit Kat Bar, Omar Kayam, Lamar, Tarmar, Lido Hotel at Lumley beach, Water Quay (way blue boat en tourist boat cam). Not the mostly 14 15 16 17 18 19 year olds i see walking the streets day and night, among them kids you will see in a school uniform the following morning. Some of them look weary about life ,skinny or malnurished, almost flat chested and all. They really need help, not to be used as sexual objects to satisfy predators' sadistic fantasies, their partners in the diapora refused to fulfil. I hope the current government will address this situation seriously, therein getting these young minds engaged in some kind of academic or vocational process. We need to get them prepared to be tomorrow's leaders. If we don't we will have to deal with a disenfranchised and angry section of the population somewhere down the road. If that happens it is going to be worse than what took place in the 90s. Also laws should passed or if already in place, enforced to deter older men/women from commiting, in some instances, what is considered as statuary rape in the united states. Lay off Grandpas.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 14:52:05 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 89.243.80.149
Message:
Wow, my friend, you seem knowledgeable about the hot spots in the city. You sound a regular so please if you can't admit it, don't disguise as the innocent one.
I swear to my God I don't know any of those places you've just mention, and it only a regular participant would have the vast knowledge you have.
Don't get me wrong, I still believe the practice is wrong in many ways.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Mohamed A. Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 19:57:26 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ool-457951c4.dyn.optonline.net at 69.121.81.196
Message:
Not at all Eddie. That knowledge comes from being born and raised at central. A place where the knack to look past the regular happenings, in order to know about the shady side of things comes almost naturally. One had to be aware of all the isms and skisms in his surrounding. I don't know how old you are, but believe me when i tell you that, back then the social order was sorted out, not officially, but with mutual understanding. The ladies of the night had their preferred spots, like the ones i mentioned in my previous piece, while older folks (many of whom were married or had steadies) liked hide-outs. Those of us in the 15 to 18 age range (mostly secondary school students) did more of the club scene in the day time, although my crew including myself would hang out, with the school leaver and twenty-something crowd, at night as well. I have started going to fetes prior to hitting the clubs, at venues like Town Hall, Pasaris Hall next door, Goodings Hall. A DJ with turntables, of course with vynil records, made things happen. Then came the dominance of the band era, which phased out the DJ spot at the fete, afternoon jump and the dance. There were more than enough bands to choose from. The "Golden Strings" whom I never saw perform live on stage, being too young to attend, but watched them practice. The "Cubanelas" who used to practice in a house behind ours at Goderich Street. The "Super Combo Kings" my alltime favourite group, "Afro National" whose mouthy fans i couldn't stand, "Sabanoh" a break away group. "Saccoh Jazz" then "Muyei" tranformed to "We Yone" dance band. (APC band we called it). "Afro Sayienor" "Vox Afric" August Bell's band. "Purple Haze" with Syl Juxon-Smith as their 16 or 17 year old drumer. I saw performances by the last two bands at movie/band shows at the Roxy theater on fridays. "Dr. Dynamite" then "Daylex" Alex and Daisy Bona's band. "Afro Mansokoloko" "Big Fyre" "Afro Superb 7" "Duke" nicknamed C90 for their medley performances.Of course male and female police bands. Also male and female military bands. Also "Fusion" which came from the FBC community. There was quite a number of venues to go with the flow. Cape Sierra, Casino Leone, in addition to the places i mentioned above.Yellow submarine, TT (Dr. Lahai-Taylor's joint), Brookfields Hotel, Provilac, Atma club, PWD canteen. Radcliff which was at the top floor of the build at the corner of Wllberforce and Siaka Stevens streets.School venues were in the mix too. Annie Walsh, Technical, FSSG, Bishop Johnson. The late 70s ushered in clubs as the places to see and be seen. I am talking about the down town scene, with the clubs "Blowup" "Laronda/Sombrero" 'Victoria/Virgin" "Kays" "Isabella" within walking distances from one to the other. Other spots like "Where else", "Phase I & later II", "Cool & Cozy", mos-def "La Trop", Eugene's "Count Down" and the eastern spots i.e Yellow Bell, Storm, Labamba. Discoramas at the renown YWCA hall, City hall, ST. Edwards hall, Prince Of Wales hall (my alma mater). Ferry excursions and moonlight picnics at the Kissy terminal, the stadium or other places, with bands, became options from clubbing. I saw foreign artists and groups in freetown also. Jimmy Cliff whose hand I shook at Air Afrique office. He later performed with Afro National on SLTV. Rufus Thomas at Recreation grounds (now Stadium), Isaac Hayes at City hall, Mariam Makeba and Prince Nico on separate occasions at the British council hall. Orchestre Lipua Lipua at the Roxy theater. Dr. Nico at paramount hotel. Osibisa and Burning spear at the stadium in '83. Joe Jackson Michael Jackson's old man at syke Street and the following monday at Kays, with the late Gipu-felix George as judges in a dancing competion. These events are among the beautiful memories i have for our homeland.You had me laughing when you opined that i was a regular participant in the koro pleasure business, the reason for my vast knowledge on the subject. I can't indulge myself in that. You might find this very hard to believe. My being might seem strange to you, if i told you that, it does matter how beautiful and sexy a woman might look to other men/women. If her presence does not stir my curiosity, lying naked in front of me means nothing. I have been interacting with the same girls (now women of course) since we were high school kids, at 15. Whether in US, the UK or back home. We have become very good friends. I will be 47 this month. You do the math. And for the clincher, I am married. To a beautiful and very intelligent 28 year old paternal mende/maternal foulah woman. Lef arkeh for me paddy. A nor sabi behr granny. Dealing with bowaras has never been in my schedule. I knew about some of them, because we lived in the same neighbourhood. A few of their spots were within the down town vicinity also.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Mammy Blessing
To: All
Date Posted: 20:51:55 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Your post brought tears to my eyes...for the sweet, warm nostalgia it flooded me with. I do remember those beautiful sights and scenes from gentle days of innocence long gone and forgotten until you, gentle raconteur, in this masterful rendition brought them all back to life in brilliant and cascading living color.
I thank you for making my weekend one smiling, happy break from life's monotony. Kindly keep posting my friend. You have a fan in me.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Mohamed A. Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 22:46:56 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: Saghinosoccerworld@yahoo.com
Entered From: ool-457951c4.dyn.optonline.net at 69.121.81.196
Message:
Thanks MB. I appreciate the positive vibes. Those are the times i dig into for solace. Reminding me that our country has had promising days before. A turn around is not impossible. A huge task yes indeed. But not impossible.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: O'toole
To: All
Date Posted: 20:34:25 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
Med, you nar brother, am from the nabouhood too.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Mohamed A. Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 23:05:01 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: Saghinosoccerworld@yahoo.com
Entered From: ool-457951c4.dyn.optonline.net at 69.121.81.196
Message:
O'toole what's up brother. It's a small world after all man. I hope our folks in the neighbourhood are hanging in there. Lets keep the comline open.
Cheers.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 15:11:20 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 89.240.207.42
Message:
My response should not be mistaken as a defence but rather a meaningful contribution.
There's certain amount of maliace to your posting, while I agree with you on the fact of girls vulnerability towards the JCs, I completely disagree with you in the context if I may quote,
"NOT indulge in the same Sugar Daddyism that resulted in the death of this poor girl."
Your title of this discussion is so demining, it suggest that the untimely death of our sister in the hands of rogue Lebanese merchant Amudey is the act of prostitution by late Alima. You ignored the shame and disgrace this has brought to our soceity. Alima is gone, she can't speak for herself now she depend on us to speak for her, only for you to dismiss her plight as a mere consequence of promiscucity.
Infact some involvements of JCs with young Sierra Leonean women has fruitful outcomes as I've witnessed in the Uk where huge number of JCs have gained citizenship and now they travell to mother Sa lone, marry these women and bring them to the UK and make very beautiful families.
Having said all that, there're still unfortunate cases but I've never had of a pure Sierra Leonean JC causing havoc to our sisters like the one perpetrated by those disloyal Lebanese. The worst a JC can do to our sisters is to dissappoint them but not killing them.
Please do not even try to minimize the impact the act of that unscrupulous Amuday have in our soceity by attempting to spreading suspicions on JCs.
Perhaps youmight worry about your man going to Sa lone.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 18:57:02 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186019.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.19
Message:
Eddie,
You are wrong my friend, a SaLone boy killed a 13 yr old Salone girl after forcing his huge prick in her. You could not have heard of it because it happened in a village in the 70s.
Do not discourage Aminata she was speaking from a lady's point of view.
Cheers, AS
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 10:54:19 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 89.243.49.79
Message:
Please try to open your mind and see others peoples' opinion on this topic before dismissing anyone's opinion.
My position here is not about discouraging anyone but to encourage people not condone things like what happened to our dear sister. Infact if you go back and read my post I hailed Aminata for most of the content of her discussion, but pointed out that she should not have used the phrase "SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME" this to my view is try to dismiss the tragedy of Alima as a mere consequency of prostitution which do not gain much sympathy in a soceity that embraces morality. Prostitutes in many parts of the world are not not considered greatly to be part of a functional soceity.
Aminata's topic indicates that the poor girl was on a mission of prostituting herself when tragedy befall her, that in it entirety, is a pre-judgement of the whole saga of events that occured on that fateful night/day, and it has the potential to drain sympathy away from people who believe there should be justice.
Please Mr Anthony Sisay, if you could give a better interpretation of the phrase THE ALIMAS BACK HOME, then I would be obliged to open apologise to anyone especially Aminata. And I must say that I openly withdraw the word vaillan used to describe Aminata, infact she's not at all. And please don't get me wrong her discussion bears a lot of truth in it but should not be under the above heading.
Now to your fabricated story a boy killing a 13 year old girl in the 70s: well, I will not have argued because you said it happened in the 70s and I was only very little. But your story lacked authenticity at the age of 13, many girls would have reached their puberty stage and at the age, it is not possible for a boy to kill a girl with a just a prick the worst that could happen is the girl will loose her virginity unplanned which is really painful but that should not amount to killing. You have to come up with a more robust explanation.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 18:12:03 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd280037.netvigator.com at 203.218.70.37
Message:
No, Mr. Grant, I don't have to come up with any robust explanation because the matter is not under investigation here. It was just a reference to let you know that it could have been you or me on the wrong side of the law, not just the Lebanese and that you should have heeded on Aminata’s calling without picking on a single black spot as the Reporters do.
That was a simple fact about the 13 yr old, because she was my class mate and I attended her funeral so I knew clearly what happened, end of story.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 08:12:06 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.146.224.4
Message:
"You are wrong my friend, a SaLone boy killed a 13 yr old Salone girl after forcing his huge prick in her. You could not have heard of it because it happened in a village in the 70s."
Your comments above suggestes that it's not really important to sympathise with the tragic death of Alima as it also occured to a 13 year old school mate of yours three decades ago.
My friend, while meaningful contribution is always welcome we still need to tread very carefully when making comments important issues. You differ from Aminata's assertion on this issue the only thing I disagreed with her is the choice of heading for the debate, where as yours is to entirely dismiss the effort the rest of us had made to bring to justice the perpetrators of the crime.
You thought because crimes likes this took place long ago, and there were no investigations conducted, so this too should not be lauded.
My friend, though I disagree with you on your 70s story which doesn't make sense I still beleive that we must move away from decades of misrule, injustices and embark on current and issues.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 08:47:07 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: n219077251127.netvigator.com at 219.77.251.127
Message:
Eddie, you are missing the point here. I am not saying the we should not investigate and punish the culprit in Alima's case. And I don't think that I deviated from Aminata's case either. I was saying that even some of us are liable to commit such an offence and that we should listen to Aminata's advice.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 15:29:23 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Brother Eddie,
I appreciate your input. My intention is not to malign the memory of the young victim. The truth however is that powerful politicians and JCs are practically superstars in Sierra Leone especially when it comes to the young girls seeking a 'line' to someone abroad, or a benefactor. I am just saying that when you are presented with a buffet....maybe you shouldn't try to eat everything on the menu. You can afford to spare the young ones while still having fun.
I am aware that some of these relationships have ended well. And God bless the happy couples. However for every happy girl, there are many more who ended with tears streaming down their cheeks.
God bless you Eddie Grant,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 15:05:56 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.146.23.112
Message:
Hi, Aminata,
Please don't be offended, infact I'm withdrwing the word vaillan I used earlier you're nothing of the sort. I hope you understand my stance, to be honest with, I'm very angry about the way the case was handled by the people we gave our utmost respect and trust.
I would equally react if it were you. The passion I have for that country and the people would not allow me to be silent on issues like these.
I have a lot of respect for you and support your theme of discussion my only problem is your choice of heading it can be interpreted in many ways.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 14:23:01 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
Aminata: I don't grasps the parrelle you are projecting. You are saying that Alima's death resulted from a sexual interference from the sugar daddy Lebanese man, and as such you are advising all JC's sugar daddies to refrain from such practices. But before you make such comparism, can you confirm whether Alima's death was due to sexual abuse.
The previous pathologist findings did not arrived at that conclusion, although many of us deemed the report a suspect and called for an independent second opinion.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 15:16:09 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Nearly everybody on this forum has expressed horror over the tragic death of Alima, supposedly at the hands of a Lebanese Sugar Daddy. Even those who were appalled at the indiscriminate mob violence directed at the Lebanese had few kind words for the alleged perpetrator, Mr Amuday Basma.
_______________________________________________________
Dear Nico,
From the excerpt above, I think I sufficiently qualified my assertion about the allegation against Mr. Basma in the death of Alima, sir.
I am quite aware of the pathologist's report that appeared to exonerate Basma. However many people are still convinced that a sexual encounter resulted in the tragedy. Anyway we await the independent autopsy report.
I am using this incident to amplify the dangers of the UNEQUAL relationship between powerful, flush-with-dollars JCs and poor, naive girls back home. If, as it is assumed, Alima died from kinky sugardaddyism, then I am hoping that my post will stir the conscience of those who were very angry at Mr Basma's alleged actions.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 15:58:59 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
"I am using this incident to amplify the dangers of the UNEQUAL relationship between powerful, flush-with-dollars JCs and poor, naive girls back home."
Aminata
I note your clarification but as a JC am uneased about the fact that you appears to target only the JC because of the dollars.
When you re-visit your above quote, you would in all fairness concede that your concerns though genuine could be construed as bias. And this is why I said that. The local sugar daddies in Salone are the worst offenders when it comes to unequal relations. Most local sugar daddies have accessed to state funds which they can pinch to enticed and take advantage of the youg girls whereas the JC don't.
I was told by a teacher, the last time I was in Salone that some teachers have mats and pillows in their school cupboard where they have fun with their pupil. How about that for one concerned with unequal relation.. Sort them out first.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 18:46:48 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Dear Nico,
I really don't have an anti-JC bias. I know that the Homebased Sugar Ds are the worst cradlenappers. I am focusing on the JCs because I am hoping that some aspects of living abroad may have tempered their lasciviousness. Besides, I believe that most of the audience here on the forum is diasporan. Please do not misunderstand my stance as Talibanic. I have no interest in regulating frolicking. I am only admonishing my menfolk on the forum to take it easy when they visit home. Chill with the hens but spare the chicklets even if their chests are puffed out...
Hopefully,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: sugah daddy
To: All
Date Posted: 16:31:02 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: pimpc@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
its always gonna be suga daddys and pimps and playas. even in usa we see this every day. the weak fall and crumble. and these young girls there parents dont have much so in soem cases they encourage them to sleep with these suga daddys. the suga daddy thing crosses political and tribal lines. this liek coruption has no gender, tribe or skin color. shame on to you suga daddys. kabbah, john benjamin, ali bangura, earnest,abdulai conteh. we know ebk is next top join the list. men we are just filthy creatures and often the ugly ones that neva got play when they were young when they get money they try to make up time. i remember geeks i went to school with back home. they tellign me how mnay women they slept w when they went back. i was sayign to myself, this is the only time we thank God for blackout so these girls dont remember you ugly faces
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Warn U. Sisters Forss
To: All
Date Posted: 14:08:50 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 198.85.63.254
Message:
So! What are you really saying about the women / girls back home? Are you stating that our women/girls (your colleagues) are "ho's" and "bitches" whose collective morality can be bought with a dollar or two? This is a very sad indictment as far as the morality of our women-folk back home is concerned.
Miss Aminata, do you have any experiences regarding this issue?
And why have you not cautioned "your sisters", but only "your brothers"?
I do NOT believe that our sisters, and our women-folk in general, are that immoral. Do you?
Is S/Leonean society that permissive, and decadent?
Please say it ain't so!!
Poverty should not lead us into overwhelming decadence. Morality should always be upheld, no matter what.
This sort of behaviour is a consequence of the war, and the corruptive practices of the political class as governors.
Warn u sister dem forss!!!
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 14:54:05 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Brother Warn,
The sexual mischief that you talk about about is indeed a fact of life in Sierra Leone today. However since it takes two to tango, both the Sugar Ds abd the young girls should be apportioned blame. The grinding poverty in the country has forced many young girls into this sexual trap. When your stomach is growling in the morning from hunger, it is at times hard to be very mindful of family values. Since the relationship is usually tilted towards the rich and powerful politician or JC, I am just appealing to your sense of decency to spare some of these kids. When some of these kids say they love you, please do not believe them. They are just scared that if they do not flatter your libido, you will bounce off to the next hottie...
Instead of sleeping with them, give them a scholarship. That is one way you can help your country. God Bless you my brother.
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 15:23:41 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.146.240.20
Message:
Your choice of topic made you a vaillan to my own point of view. Though what you've just narrated may have some truth in it, you'll not be happy if you loose a love one for example your daughter in the manner late Alima died and someone pops up and decides to discuss this traumatic event this way.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 15:39:26 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
This topic has been raging in newspapers and fora all over Sierra Leone and the diaspora. People have rioted and targeted Lebanese in Sierra Leone because of this incident. Dear Mr Grant, I think the hook in my post is very appropriate. The unequal nature of the relationship between a 'wealthy' Lebanese or JC and a struggling gal in Sierra Leone can lead to the tragedy exempified in the Alima tragedy. I am sorry that you think my stance is villainous, but it is okay sir.
Sincerely,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Jetly Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 18:16:35 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-143-53-43.hsd1.va.comcast.net at 69.143.53.43
Message:
Amy,
I see your point about the influences of politicians, JCs have on our poor sisters. However, why can't we go back and re-assess some of the social factors that are affecting our young female population. In my understanding, the average girl in S/L is not even a high school graduate. As a result, they have limited knowledge about the potential repercussions for engaging in such exploitive activities.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 18:52:20 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Thank you Jetly for this brilliant dimension to the angle. Indeed, the damage to the moral fabric of society has to be factored into this argument. No doubt, this Sugardaddyism that has robbed kids of their childhood has to be viewed through the prism of societal failure.
Thanks again for your perspicacity,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: babbob
To: All
Date Posted: 02:07:05 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.153
Message:
Amina,
You seem to come from a good home with good manners. I'm sorry to say that SugarDaddyism was not brought in by JC's.
JC's started going back home enmasse after the recent war. I left Sierra Leone in the early 1980s and by that time sugardaddyism had pilfered into the society very much.
Sugardaddyism started when Officials in high places started stealing the nations treasures and flunting it on young girls who wanted to wear and be at par with everyone and everty thing done in London or US. Remember the Massaqouis, Vouchergate...... and the like?
It got worsened during the war when there were 17,000 strong UN force foreigners with Dollars stationed in Sierra Leone to work with.
Check back home and see what has happened to our society......... It really pathetic. Kids produced with the assistance of UN soldiers (Bangladeshis, pakistanis, nigerians, kenyans....... you name it) with currently no fathers. Go up to the provinces also at nereby villages where the UN battalions were stationed.
So my sister, JCs are not the problem, but some of our sisters back home.
I think that your campaign should be targetted at educating the ladies with the repercussion of their behaviour.
Some of the girls you're advocating for are not from poor families that cannot put food to their mouth. They just like living extravagant lives that they're unable to upkeep.
I was shocked when I went for holidays in 1989 and saw a lady that I knew was working at the then Backlays bank soliciting sex-for-money at the Bintumani area.
I was equally agitated when I saw a German guy with Video camera coming -out from a hotel in the Beach hotels with a Sierra Leone very early in the morning. I was sick to the stomach, thinking that these girls even don't what these guys may be doing with sex video movies about them.
Hey, I used to stay in these hotels when I travel back home with my wife and family.......... so don't start thinking otherwise (hehehe.....pun).
It could be a very honourable thing if we could start educating some of our sisters/girls back home.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 07:35:37 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Sir,
It is an honor to read your wonderful response. I actually have read many of your posts before. What you said about educating the gals back home about the emotional and medical dangers of sugardaddyism is salient and well noted. I hope that the parents and authorities take note of your worthy suggestion.
God Bless Sir,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Lawlawde80
To: All
Date Posted: 21:19:06 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: lawlawde80@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 146.189.230.25
Message:
I think Aminata you have sparked a a topic that will interest all well-meaning SLeoneans both here and abroad. I do not want to take sides but rather throw light on some comments. I have been in Sierra leone around times like this (christmas) and while it is dishearthen to see the rate at which our sisters flood on to JC's, it is also mind racking to note that most of these sisters really cause a lot of trouble for people who look forward to spending quality time back home during vacations like Christmas. They flood all over the place, even prevent you from having fun cause they all over your grill. On the flip side i have come across a lot of our sisters who are well focused, centrally placed and not out there to catch the eye of a JC. See the problem is two fold and should be addressed from the focus of both the JC's and the home based sisters. A lot of the JC's who live The States with the intent to go home and have fun with the gals outta there are really half baked mediocres whose misplaced ideologies come cheap. There are zillions of gals here and all over the world, if you even want to be local in searching for a SL sister they are everywhere, so it is just a mere show of cowardise that force them to leave here with baggy pants and empty head and some nursing home change in there pocket, with the intent of panting behind gals in Freetown. On the contrary a lot of us really go back home to execute positive agendas that will mean well for our people including the sisters. On there side out there again they get cloned with this facade of Americanism/JCism that every thing JC glows in there eyes, they jump on anything called or that smells like JC. See with all this writing, the point really that am trying to make is this "when you chastize the dog, dont forget to also throw away the bone". Lets get this topic debated with clearity
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 23:05:03 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
You are quite right that it takes two to tango Lawlawde80. I wish the girls back home would be more sensible and focused on values that will move them on to higher education, strength and empowerment. I am focusing on the JCs because they are the ones with the power, money and glamour in the relationship. They are the ghetto-fabulous rock superstar satyrs and the girls, many of them barely out of their teens, are nothing more than groupies with stars in their eyes. If the conscience of a few of our big brothers is stirred, maybe this exercise would have been worth it. Many of us were deeply touched by the Alima tragedy. I just hope that we channel our outrage into setting a good example.
Subject: Re: HOLIDAY JCs, SPARE THE ALIMAS BACK HOME!!
From: NO WAY OUT
To: All
Date Posted: 04:38:58 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
Sometimes it takes three to tango in Salone:
The parent, the daughter, and the highest bidder.
Subject: KABBAH'S SPEECH
From: Bra Mus
To: All
Date Posted: 12:32:06 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: dele25@yahoo.com
Entered From: pool-70-18-244-163.res.east.verizon.net at 70.18.244.163
Message:
The average Sa Lone man would not understand or refuse to grasp former President Kabbah's speech. The fact is that the AFRC/Rebel Govt. so devastated Sierra Leone that it would take over twenty years to rebuild infrastucture and morale in such a poor country. As is coming to light the previous SLPP govt. did all it could but lost the propaganda war to the APC. (APC always aabi alah alah en bose bose)eg Libya rice etc. We wish President Koroma well but Sierra Leoneans will never stand for the rehabilitation or Amnesty for Johnny Paul Koroma (no relation ?) I hope
Subject: SHEKU KALLON, IMF AND THE SLPP
From: Brabanxx
To: All
Date Posted: 12:07:41 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: brabanxx@aol.com
Entered From: static-216-83-121-130.sniparpa.net at 216.83.121.130
Message:
Statement by IMF Staff Mission to the Republic of Sierra Leone
Press Release No.07/259
November 14, 2007
The following statement was issued today in Freetown by Norbert Toé, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Mission Chief for the Republic of Sierra Leone:
"An IMF mission visited the Republic of Sierra Leone during November 7-14, 2007 to meet with the new administration and discuss its economic priorities, including the 2008 budget, and to take stock of the current economic situation and prospects. The mission met with His Excellency President Ernest Bai Koroma, Minister of Finance and Economic Development David O. Carew, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone Dr. Mohammed Fofana, other senior officials of the government and the central bank, representatives of the business community, nongovernmental organizations, and development partners. The mission would like to thank the authorities for their warm hospitality and the constructive and fruitful policy discussions.
"The mission noted that output growth in Sierra Leone in 2007 continues to be robust at about 7 percent, sustained by strong agricultural and mining production as well as buoyant construction and service sectors. Inflation remained slightly above double digit level for most of 2007, reflecting a shortage of basic consumer goods following supply disruptions and the effects of an accommodating monetary policy in the first quarter of 2007. A continuing fiscal challenge is the significant weakening in domestic revenue mobilization and shortfall in external budget support. In response, the authorities implemented a cash-budget management system starting in April 2007 with adherence to tight cash targets but accumulated substantial payment arrears. For the remainder of 2007, the mission was encouraged by the authorities' decision to continue the cash-budget management system while prioritizing spending and avoiding the accumulation of new payment arrears.
"For 2008, the mission and the authorities agreed on the need to shore up the revenue base. This is essential to create room for sustainable poverty-reducing expenditures in the priority areas of health, education, electricity and water supplies, while preserving macroeconomic stability. The mission also underscored the importance of enhancing the efficiency of public spending and of strengthening governance and accountability.
"The mission reaffirmed the IMF's readiness to continue to assist Sierra Leone and looks forward to the continuation of the close policy dialogue in the near future."
==================================================================================================================================================================
At the conclusion of its visit to Sierra Leone, the mission chief announced that output growth continues to be robust, the agricultural and mining sectors continue to be buoyant, and economic growth stands at an impressive 7%. the mission advises the government to increase revenue and preserve macroeconomic stability while providing essential services. the IMF concluded by re-stating its commitment to working with the Sierra Leone government. I wonder what the APC will leave behind after 5 years in off
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr Kallon,
The former is the IMF press release you posited in your posting as evidenced by the latter.I did not see anything that is contained in that press release to support your claim that: "IMF PRONOUNCES THAT SLPP STEWARDSHIP OF THE ECONOMY WAS EXEMPLARY AND THAT THE APC INHERITS A ROBUST ECONOMY THAT WILL GROW." Did you read the following "Inflation remained slightly above double digit level for most of 2007, reflecting a shortage of basic consumer goods following supply disruptions and the effects of an accommodating monetary policy in the first quarter of 2007. A continuing fiscal challenge is the significant weakening in domestic revenue mobilization and shortfall in external budget support." What good is economic growth if the people have to live with double digit inflation and shortage of the basics. The revenue support was weak during the SLPP days. I'll excuse you because you did not know about the abuses at the NRA. All true and loyal Sierra Leoneans will love to see and maintain a robust economy. Until then, please do not state it as a fact.
The implementation of a cash-budget management system resulted in non-payments of some of our bills. As a result there is a substantial accumulation of payment arrears. In other words, it is possible that the cash (revenue) that was accumalated has encumbrances that might reduce the $180M left by the SLPP regime to almost zero or below. The IMF report was about economic growth. The release did not give a balance sheet of the SLPP's financial activities. The IMF is good at deception. According to William Easterly, in his report :NATIONAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC GROWTH-A REAPPRAISAL, published by New York University Center for Global Development, he states that:"I find the audacious claim that policy reform can cut world poverty in half a little daunting...The international Monetary Fund(2000)also claims that 'where{sound macro-econimic} policies policies have been sustained, they have raised growth and reduced poverty.' These claims are often held out as hope to economically troubled continents like Africa:Policy action and foreign assistance...will surely work together to build a continent that shows real gains in both development and income in the near future.Unfortunalely, this claim was made in World Bank (1981) and the 'real gains' in Africa have yet to arrive as of 2003." As you can see Mr. Kallon, the IMF uses the same paint brush on all poor African countries. Sierra Leone is no different.
With these said Mr. Kallon, I know that a viable opposition is a good recipe for any democracy to survive. However let us not misinform our people in the name of opposition. Let us give this administration time to prove its worth. The peolpe are smart enough to know if there is rampant corruption and non delivery of essentail services. As it was with the SLPP so is now with the APC, Amen
Subject: Re: SHEKU KALLON, IMF AND THE SLPP
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 13:12:37 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 165.155.200.149
Message:
Brabanxx, you are fast becoming one of my favorite forumites, along with Candid Opinion and Bra Enviable. I have seen slaps in my life but the hard, literate slap you administered to the Munku lie-lie propaganda of Sheku Kallon is sharp and totally devastating.
It is the half truths and baseless lies that the SLPP indulged in during their misrule that is today causing them to whistle Kamabai in the political wilderness. You cannot just use flowery words and sweet rhetoric to cover the latrine sting of misrule. You gotta get down and get your hands dirty sometime to achieve something. 7% growth indeed. Ha!
Subject: Re: SHEKU KALLON, IMF AND THE SLPP
From: Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
To: All
Date Posted: 12:50:42 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
If the statements of the IMF,as it has always been , right why is Sierra Leone still down the HDI?
Subject: Re: SHEKU KALLON, IMF AND THE SLPP
From: Brabanxx
To: All
Date Posted: 13:01:41 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: brabanxx@aol.com
Entered From: static-216-83-121-130.sniparpa.net at 216.83.121.130
Message:
"If the statements of the IMF,as it has always been , right why is Sierra Leone still down the HDI?"
That is exactly my position in response to Mr. Sheku Kallon. William Easterly also shared the same view. From my posting I highlighted his position on the issue,viz;...Unfortunately, this claim was made in World Bank (1981) and the "real gains" in Africa have yet to arrive as of 2003.
Subject: Re: SHEKU KALLON, IMF AND THE SLPP
From: Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
To: All
Date Posted: 13:58:39 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
I am only re echoing your statement because this is what has been the trump card of the SLPP .They got millions from the international community crying rehabilitation and go to the web site of national social action and you will see how those monies were shared amongst the SLPP,Kanja Sesay, his friends and relatives.
National Revenue Authority became personal revenue collection authority for political big wigs.
Money for the health sector were converted to loan to persons who had it not been for divine giudance would have been in power today to finish the work of getting rid of all potential opposition so that the SLPP will rule for ever!
EH WAE U SEE DEM DON GO SO NAR TOLONGBO!!!!APC FAIL WE GO FORM NEW PARTI BUT NON OL TIFMAN NOR GO RULE WANDA AGAIN!!!!
Subject: CHAD BAILOR & O'KEEFE
From: Bra Bod
To: All
Date Posted: 11:47:37 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: dele25@yahoo.com
Entered From: pool-70-17-65-35.res.east.verizon.net at 70.17.65.35
Message:
O'Keefe is a long time resident of Maryland who used to live in the Laurel area. His wife died a few years ago. Can someone come up with his real name please?
Subject: Free Advice for SLPP - For Anthony Sisay
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 10:46:49 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
Let me respond quic quic one,
1. I never said EBK is a genius. Whether he is or not who cares. Sierra Leone does not need a genius leader, but a patriotic one taking strides to bring purpose and meaning to our poor people.
2. The SLPP devil is too scary to live with. I would rather have an angel I don't know. Life is full of choices and chances. Everyday we are making decisions that bounder with the "devil you know and the angel you don't know". All we need is wisdom and understanding in dealing with such matters.
3. I don't understand EBK's "ma gee gee" move that makes us divided. It can be deduced from the utterances of some SLPP members, they would do whatever and however to REMAIN DIVIDED and blame it on APC as divisive. It is your choice and I don't believe EBK is that kind of a leader. The main base of the APC is in the North and one would therefore expect a northern majority in the new government.
4. Apologise to the Lebanese? The right approach is for the law to take its course. Is it not the responsibility of the police to deal with lawlessness? When did it become the job of the President to go around houses, communities, towns and villages apolizing for the wrong of lawless citizens?
5. The temporary electricity supply is a one year measure which will likely coincide with the completion of Bumbuna. Man take tem now nor with your statements.
6. Yes, I agree with you that the country was heading in the right direction. My question though is this: would you travel on snails back from Freetown to Kailahun when you have the option to go on foot, by bicycle, car or plane?
7. MY SUGGESTION ONCE AGAIN TO ALL SLPP SUPPORTERS, PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER IT IS MESSY.
In conclusion, in my considered view, SLPP is history and it members have not learnt from their horrible and terrible mistakes. You are still throwing mud at anybody and everybody who dare question your failed organisation.
Subject: Re: Free Advice for SLPP - For Anthony Sisay
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 11:13:21 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186061.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.61
Message:
"The SLPP devil is too scary to live with. I would rather have an angel I don't know. Life is full of choices and chances."
Huge mistake, you will be like a prostitute who is ready to open up to a nice gentleman carrying the deadliest virus.
"The main base of the APC is in the North and one would therefore expect a northern majority in the new government."
Yes you could be right, but we are not looking for this type of government. We want the president to scout the whole country for the best candidate. And don't tell me that the best are all in the north.
"Apologise to the Lebanese?"
Yes, it is the president's position to apologise to the lebanese and assure them that his administration will not accept any lawlessness.
"The temporary electricity supply is a one year measure which will likely coincide with the completion of Bumbuna."
You are wrong, we need at least half a decade more to complete Bumbuna. Any backup plan?
"My question though is this: would you travel on snails back from Freetown to Kailahun when you have the option to go on foot, by bicycle, car or plane?"
And who do you thing is going to let me fly at will?
"MY SUGGESTION ONCE AGAIN TO ALL SLPP SUPPORTERS, PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER IT IS MESSY"
The house was in order until you broke in to rub.
Subject: Re: Free Advice for SLPP - For Anthony Sisay
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 21:09:35 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
You shot your SLPP 'bare foot' with this:
"You are wrong, we need at least half a decade more to complete Bumbuna. Any backup plan?"
So it was A COMPLETELY LIE when Berewa and the SLPP government announced to the whole world that Bumbuna will be complete by end of June 2007? So SLPP knew all along that it requires a decade? If this is true, this is what Sierra Leoneans will do - IGNORE THE SLPP FOR THE NEXT 5 DECADES AS PUNISHMENT FOR SLPP DISHONESTY.
You guys better cool off, or kill your party forever. It is your choice, not mine.
Thank you.
Subject: Re: Free Advice for SLPP - For Anthony Sisay
From: Salone Police
To: All
Date Posted: 11:11:36 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: Salonepolice@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-75-53-196-165.dsl.hstntx.sbcglobal.net at 75.53.196.165
Message:
6. Yes, I agree with you that the country was heading in the right direction. My question though is this: would you travel on snails back from Freetown to Kailahun when you have the option to go on foot, by bicycle, car or plane?
____________________
How do you know it is a bicycle, car, or plane? Because APC has said so or because no other option can be conceivably worse than SLPP? What's your logic?
Subject: Re: Free Advice for SLPP - For Anthony Sisay
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 21:20:40 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
Mr. Salone Police,
My analogy means that the SLPP government did progress the development of the country with the speed required. I am sure you are very familiar about the deplorable infrastructure in the country - no electik, no wata, dorty all sie. This is snail speed progress.
Subject: Re: Free Advice for SLPP - For Anthony Sisay
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 00:22:53 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
correction:
"SLPP government did NOT progress the development of the country with the speed required"
Subject: Sierra Leonean Footballer deportation threat
From: Freetong Pikin
To: All
Date Posted: 10:45:15 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 80-45-43-34.static.dsl.as9105.com at 80.45.43.34
Message:
Watford manager Aidy Boothroyd will appear in court in an effort to save midfielder Al Bangura from deportation back to Sierra Leone.
Officially, Bangura does not exist. The 19-year-old has no papers from Sierra Leone, he cannot get a UK passport until cleared to stay in Britain and cannot get a driving licence without documentary proof of his identity.
Bangura was cleared to stay in Britain earlier this year, only for the Home Office to lodge an appeal on a legal technicality, claiming his status as an asylum seeker changed when he turned 18.
Boothroyd will speak before an immigration tribunal on Monday week.
A Watford source said: "It's a disgraceful way to treat a genuine refugee who, far from living off state benefits and being a burden to the taxpayer, paid Ł120,000 in tax himself last year.
"Al's father was butchered in the civil war and he escaped the clutches of both a voodoo cult in Sierra Leone and a child trafficking network, only to fall foul of red tape.
"If he was sent back to Africa it would destroy a promising career, break up a family and weaken Aidy's squad at a stroke. We are going to fight this all the way."
Subject: Re: Sierra Leonean Footballer deportation threat
From: US OF A
To: All
Date Posted: 03:23:27 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 144.226.173.69
Message:
A man who paid 120 pounds in taxes will probably not need a lawyer to become a legal resident in my neck of the woods. God bless the US of A.
Subject: Re: Sierra Leonean Footballer deportation threat
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 14:10:16 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
"Bangura was cleared to stay in Britain earlier this year, only for the Home Office to lodge an appeal on a legal technicality, claiming his status as an asylum seeker changed when he turned 18"
He was not cleared to stay,he was instead granted TPA his case was treated as a minor, a minor asylum claimant, if that was his status, cannot be removed until they are 18. But I wish him better luck in his appeal.
Subject: BABOO YAIYE OOOOO TO SLPP
From: Kanforie Sorie Koroma
To: All
Date Posted: 10:10:10 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Babooyaiooooooo...APC licked the pants out of you. APC forever. APC will reign forever in Sierra Leone. Like it or not, it is APC in power for the next 15 years or more. Babooyaiyeoooooooooo
Subject: Re: BABOO YAIYE OOOOO TO SLPP
From: Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
To: All
Date Posted: 12:58:32 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
Bo una lef parti buzness now.SLPP nar dem born APC.
DI ONLI TIN IS LEH WE MAK SA LONE.
Ah nor dae APC nor SLPP BUT AH DAE FOR ERNEST BIKUZ IM NA NEW MAN PAN DIS OL DORTI GAME!!
SONTEM IM YONE GAME GO DIFEREN EN EE GO MAKE SOME NEW TIN HAPEN!
MAN FOR LOK FORWARD NOR TO BAKWARD!!!!!!!
Subject: Re: BABOO YAIYE OOOOO TO SLPP
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 10:45:00 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-132-17-230.range86-132.btcentralplus.com at 86.132.17.230
Message:
What are you talking about? We were there!! Our people turned up in full force to show that we truly have the country's interest.
Whatever came from your assumed current SLPP leadership is a joke. Our SLLP voters and sympathisers will not be so short sighted to boycott a national agenda.
Keep cool and stop your generalisations!! We are one country and one people!!
Subject: Re: BABOO YAIYE OOOOO TO SLPP
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 10:55:47 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
True say talk me. It is the leadership that is a TOTAL FAILURE. Gbata gbata. Absolutely useless. An international and a national joke. Until you change the leadership, SLPP may as well take a "well deserved retirement" with Kabbah as he stated in the inauguration of Ernest.
Berewa is gone. More has to go before some of us may even consider the SLPP as a meaningful organisation.
Subject: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: M. Alieu Iscandari Esq
To: All
Date Posted: 09:34:13 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
In democracys the transition from one government to another is a source of PRIDE. Every political party whether governing or opposition MUST make it a point of duty to be represented in this democratic exercise. The absence of the SLPP from the inauguration of President Ernest Bai Koroma, has and should send a clear message to the sierra leonean community and the world at large, that the SLPP does not mean well for sierra leone, is a party of sore losers, is very UN PATRIOTIC AND UN NATIONALISTIC party.
Given the new trend of the SLPP of bucking the very democracy which they wants us to believe that they created. It is my considered opinion that the SLPPs claim to have invented or re invented democracy in sierra leone, is a farce, considering their actions to thwart democracy in sierra leone.
These actions include but are not limited to the alleged "conbention" and coronation of chief Berewah as their leader. The refusal of said Berewah to debate national issues on the campaign trail. The use of force by its leaders in the Kailahun Axis to prevent the APC and PMDC from campaigning in these areas. The apparent infiltration of SLPP agents into the electoral process in order to thwart the will of the people. The massive voter rigging that took place in many parts of the SLPP strongholds, again intended to ursurp the will of the people. And the present action to "boycott" the Inauguration of the new president of sierra leone Ernest Bai Koroma.
The SLPP is a bunch of sore losers and the sooner that some of them are brought to answer for the massive fraud and corruption that took place during the years of SLPP rule, the better we will all be. To hell with those in the SLPP who are going to be claiming that this is a witch hunt. As far as these people are concerned, they would rather these who have ripped off the country stay with their looted wealth. That is the SLPP way.
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: TAMBA MOIWO
To: All
Date Posted: 10:02:02 11/18/07 ()
Email Address: moiwo@hotmail.co.uk
Entered From: host-84-9-8-49.bulldogdsl.com at 84.9.8.49
Message:
"that the SLPP does not mean well for sierra leone"
Arrant nonesense my friend.This govt is largely insensitive to the complains of the Party.When our offices were looted and burnt down what did YOUR PRESIDENT DO?
tHE MAN IS A MORON WHO HAS PACKED HIS CABINET WITH NORTHERNERS.THIS IS NOT AN INCLUSIVE AND PARTICIPATORY GOVT.
NO ONE TAKES YOU GUYS SERIOUS.
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: MUSA KAMARA
To: All
Date Posted: 10:26:16 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: luna.hypair.net at 194.50.180.4
Message:
No need to waste our precious time for evil minded and low self-esteem bandits.Their days of banditry are over,but the nation needs answers for the massive embezzlement of the nation's resources.The ACC should investigate thoroughly and if any misappropriation discovered,then the individuals should pay back or face the full force of the law.
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: Salone Police
To: All
Date Posted: 10:17:16 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: salonepolice@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-75-53-196-165.dsl.hstntx.sbcglobal.net at 75.53.196.165
Message:
Mr. Iscandari:
I think the SLPP justified its decision in its press statement. Dismissing the opposition in this manner is not consistent with the spirit of democracy and civilized political conduct. The APC leadership must pursue its national development agenda with a spirit of national inclusiveness. I do not think that the APC gains anything spectacular with the sacking of a few sLPP operatives. This symbolic sweeping away of the old is not good politics.
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 14:40:28 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
If you really think that president koroma has acted illegally by sacking your SLPP, the best course of action to take is to go to court to redress the situation.
Are there not laws and constitution governing employment relations in Salone?
Boycotting a state occasion graced by the representatives of the international community and world leaders was a folly on the part of the SLPP, but then it shows the rubbish executive the party has.
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: MUSA KAMARA
To: All
Date Posted: 10:31:07 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: luna.hypair.net at 194.50.180.4
Message:
Even if they are state criminals?Your level of thinking will never free our nation from endemic poverty.SHAME!
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: Salone Police
To: All
Date Posted: 11:19:31 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: Salonepolice@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-75-53-196-165.dsl.hstntx.sbcglobal.net at 75.53.196.165
Message:
Mr. Kamara: They are not state criminals. President Ernest Koroma said that he sacked the two commissioners using constitutional powers granted him by Artcle 32, Sec 8 which gives him power to sack electoral commissioners for misbehavior or mental or body infirmity. If these people were criminals, President Koroma would have/should be using the law courts. I still do not think the sackings are good politics. The best way to weaken the opposition is to keep their main men in place and under watch - in that way, they have no collective wrong to rally around. The way President Koroma is doing his thing with this massive northernization is not good politics. He can learn from Shaki who was a great politician but evil minded. President Koroma can be a great politician, be patriotic, and also have excellent intentions for the benefit of Sierra Leone.
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: Town Crier
To: All
Date Posted: 10:34:05 11/18/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-71-227-59-251.hsd1.mi.comcast.net at 71.227.59.251
Message:
Can someone explain to me, how this can be. The president is in effect saying he sacked the electoral commissioners because they were mad. I believe this article was in place only in the case that electoral commissioners fall sick, or became mentally ill and are therefore proclaimed unfit to serve. Is there no judicial fight in the SLPP no more? Or have they forgotten their rights?
This is pure misuse of the law, and I dare the SLPP to take a better stance than press releases and boycotts to challenge APC on this issue......
Subject: Re: SLPP's Absence shows UNPATRIOTISM
From: Kanfori Sorie Koroma
To: All
Date Posted: 10:06:56 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
They are a bunch of sore losers, Allieu .But SLPP or no SLPP , the ceremony went on and some of us enjoyed until we nearly died. My feet are sore from the dancing.
UP WITH THE APC
DOWN WITH THE SLPP
Subject: KABS KANU , EAT BEEF EN GEE DOG BONE ! ! !
From: Bra Aina
To: All
Date Posted: 08:25:49 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Kabs Kanu, you have done a great job for Sierra Leone. Don't worry about your detractors.You did a good job during the elections and APC won. The APC victory is also your victory.You should still be celebrating.
Borbor, eat beef en gee dog bone.
Leave the bone for the SLPP. They are finished. There is no hope for them anymore.
Subject: IT IS YOU PEOPLE WHO HAVE TIME FOR LOSERS
From: Kanforie Sorie Koroma
To: All
Date Posted: 08:18:57 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
I have long stopped posting on this forum to respond to SLPP losers because it is waste of time and counter-productive. It is you people who have time for SLPP losers. SLPP had 11 years .What did they leave behind ? Extreme poverty, hardship, backwardness, frustration and confusion. These are the people you want to engage ? Just look at yesterday. YESTERDAY was a Day of Victory for the APC.When I saw my APC and Sierra Leone President on Cocorioko, waving the Presidential staff to the whole world, I was so glad. Yesterday, I asked my wife to kill five of our big roosters and make a big feast where I invited friends to come and enjoy. This is what you guys should be doing. Enjoy the APC victory . Don't waste your time with losers. SLPP will never change. First, they wanted to sabotage democracy. It did not work. Next, they have gone on the rampage with lies and half-truths. Why should I bother with such people. Listen to all President Kabbah's lies yesterday . Are these the people to worry about.
Unu enjoy una victory. Disregard SLPP losers
APC , su ba mu ku ram o ,
Su kara mu kakums
Su karamu kakuma
APC , su ba mu ku ram o,
Su karamu kakuma
A-----AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
P-----PPPPPPPPPPPPPPC
C-----CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
APC, BACK TO POWER
Subject: Re: IT IS YOU PEOPLE WHO HAVE TIME FOR LOSERS
From: BRA ENVIABLE
To: All
Date Posted: 15:36:53 11/17/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
Kanforie Sorie Koroma nar kays
Subject: SLPP VERY UNGRATEFUL AND VINDICTIVE
From: Truth Be Said
To: All
Date Posted: 07:44:59 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
I was not happy when APC defeated SLPP during the last elections. I have always had a soft spot for SLPP but then when I looked at it, the people of Sierra Leone made the right decision. SLPP deserved to go.
One of the things I am unhappy with SLPP about is their ungratefulness and vindictiveness. Look at how SLPP treated those who fought to bring them back in 1996.People like Joe Demby, Hinga Norman, and others. Let us look at the vindictive part.SLPP is copmplaining that APC supporters have been harassing and intimidating them since the elections results were announced.But who has been very vindictive ? It is the same SLPP. Just look at this forum, for example. Because Cocorioko did not support them, look at the desperate attempts they are making to paint the newspaper black. Have they forgotten all the sacrifices of Cocorioko ? Was Cocorioko not the one who covered all of SLPP Presidential candidate,Solomon Berewa's tours of the U.S. ? Was Cocorioko not the one who was giving space to SLPP bigots like the shamed and disgraced Sia Tiyaama, Professor Kelfala Kallon, Jia Kangbai, Dr. Paul Amara, and others to spew their lies and propaganda to us ? Have they forgotten that it was Cocorioko who gave us the different viewpoints of the assassination attempt on the then APC Leader ? Why all the fervor now to make Cocorioko look like it is toilet paper ? Anything and anybody who does not support SLPP has to be trashed and beaten out of shape .Anything that does not support the SLPP has to be a victim of character-assassination.
As far as some of us are concerned, KABS KANU has done a lot to promote outstanding journalism. The man has been spending his own money not only to provide us speedy and reliable news from Sierra Leone but a forum where to express ourselves. Rather than sit down and let SLPPers bring this man's hard-won reputation and quality to the dust, let us all speak out about this vindictive attitude of the SLPP to paint black anything that does not support them. Cocorioko should not suffer because SLPP lost the elections. It is very unfair.
Subject: Re: SLPP VERY UNGRATEFUL AND VINDICTIVE
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 12:06:34 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 165.155.200.149
Message:
Brother Truth,
Thanks for a sober analysis of the SLPP character. I am sure you speak for a lot of people who are saddened by the tragic departure from concilliation by the GOP of sierra leone politics. I wept in disappointment when the 'Karl Rove' of African politics, the incomparable J.J Blood decided to boycott the innauguration. it would have been a pleasant sight of democracy in action for the SLPP to be present at the investiture. I think democracy works best when incompetent functionaries are removed without their party crying WITCH HUNT!
May God blesss you my brother,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: SLPP VERY UNGRATEFUL AND VINDICTIVE
From: M. Alieu Iscandari Esq
To: All
Date Posted: 13:22:48 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
WITCH HUNT
___________________________________________________________
AND WHAT IS WRONG WITH A WITCH HUNT? IF THERE WERE NO WITCHES WOULD WE HAVE A WITCH HUNT? hey lets get rid of the witches and lets have a WITCH HUNT. LOL
Subject: OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT KOROMA
From: Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
To: All
Date Posted: 07:00:56 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: mbjalj@online.no
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT KOROMA
From:Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
Hordaland Fylke(Province)
Norway
TO: His Excellency Ernest Bai Koroma
Your Excellency,
RE: “The police must stop taking tips from the driver and the teachers must stop taking handouts from kids and parents,"
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your assumption of the highest office of our beloved Sierra Leone. I am ,from my personal viewpoint ,convinced that Sierra Leone now has the opportunity to make progress as you are the first elected Leader who has lived and seen it all whilst it happened. By this I mean you have been in Sierra Leone all along and you know, if not all, but most of what went wrong and how it went wrong if not who made it go wrong. The first step towards solving any problem is the ability to understand the problem and that I believe you are in a position to do.
However, I was touched by the keynote to your inauguration speech quoted above. This, incidentally, has been used by the BBC and other international media houses to epitomise your will to eradicate corruption from the Sierra Leonean society.
Your Excellency, this statement left me in a state of confusion as I find it to be one of understatement of the problems of corruption in Sierra Leone. I am saying this not out of contempt but from my personal experience as a professionally trained teacher who had been part and parcel of the same society with you from my graduation in 1979 to 1992.
Within the said period, the social infrastructure of Sierra Leone was destroyed by people outside of the two services mentioned above but who are also public servants.
The political class and civil servants, in that said period, were engaged in mismanaging the economy whilst Teachers, Nurses, Doctors and police officers will go for months without pay. Within the same period also many a young and talented teacher left to join other public services that seem more lucrative whilst some left the shores of Sierra Leone for assumed “greener pastures” and today there are a lot of them who you will be surprised to know are languishing in Europe and the Americas.
Some of us bore it out and by 1990 when we could not take it anymore there was a four months teacher’s strike in which I actively participated and some of us risked being charged for treason and subversion between January and May of that year but for our tenacity and honesty of purpose. The key issue of contention at that time was that the Kinsley –Davies conditions of service was outdated and that facts and figures in that document did not measure with the realities at that time. Another issue was that the then government had compromised the profession by appointing the secretary general to Parliament and that for as long as he was in parliament he had little or nothing to do for teachers as personal considerations over rode his official considerations. That was of course a contention born out of desperation as teachers were at that time going for six or more months without salaries that were not even enough to pay their rents let alone feed or cloth them not to talk about other needs. The man who by then was secretary general, was a gentleman who was a victim of circumstances as by then the government was in very desperate strait and were negotiating with the IMF for assistance and a lot of conditionalities had been put on the table for that government to meet .
The government ,as we were made to understand later, had ask for buffer assistance in cash to pay salaries for a period and had been told out right that such an assistance was not in the domain of the IMF.This cash assistance was meant to pay teachers, nurses and other public servants for at least one year if it was approved whilst steps to put other modalities for revenue collection would have been worked out, as revenue by then could not meet the monthly demands for payment of salaries not to talk about servicing the government.
The secretary general, my friend, was used as a scapegoat after it became clear that teachers were 100% behind us who were the leaders of that strike. He was honourably asked to resign and we took over the administration of the union’s affairs.
We set out to negotiate with the government on a number of new conditions and were finally asked to present a draft of what we wanted after the government had realised that we were hard nuts to crack. Several of the ministers and politicians had advised President Momoh to arrest and charge us for subversion as by then the government had information of the pending RUF war. In fact some even said we were the RUF.
I WILL TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SAY THAT MOST IF NOT ALL OF THAT HAPPENED BECAUSE OF THE PATIENCE AND TACT OF THE LATE JAMES BAMBAY KAMARA,BY THEN THE INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE. MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE!
I am writing all this Your Excellency because I want you to have a picture of the fact that within that period a new condition of service that is more realistic was drafted .I will firmly say here that I did most of the drafting work along with the Late Tony Rogers by then desk officer at the ministry of education. I am proud to say that one condition I included was SOCIAL SECURITY for teachers so that the average teacher will be able to get a place to lay his head and retire with benefits that will make him die a peaceful soul. This was mitigated by the fact that teachers died and were buried like paupers. I am happy that the erstwhile minister of Labour, Alpha Timbo, did ensure that this got off whilst he was serving in the form of the present National social security institution (NASITT).
Your Excellency if you are going to succeed in getting rid of corruption I believe this is one institution that you must improve on. Corruption, an endemic situation, cannot be gotten rid of by words and an anti corruption commission if alternative measures are not taken to make the public service more meaningful by having benefits such as housing, an attractive retirement benefit and even a scheme for workers to travel and relax during their leave, medical insurance etc.
The bottom line to corruption at any level is that the expenses are not at par with the income so the individual has to look for extra sources of income. Some can be wilfully created by lack of discipline whilst the major of such cases, even involving Members of parliament and ministers, is circumstantial.
I am saying circumstantial because even as I am writing the people who elected you are on your backs asking what you may not have to give. So it is better you consider the alternatives of political suicide by standing firm on policy even with your close relatives and friends or let the beat go on! If the beat goes on then your statements will be mere words not translated into actions.
So, Your Excellency, now that you have made this open statement using two very key and politically volatile groups as an example of your understanding of what the situation is I will personally advice that you take steps to make the conditions of service in the public sector more realistic. I will advice against any increase in salaries because any per centum added will mean nothing added as 50% of 0 =0.If salaries are to be reviewed let it be on the basis of real indices based on the present bread and basket situation in Sierra Leone.
Also look at the conditions in terms of paying salaries on time, improving the benefits and allowances, upgrading NASITT and making it more functional in terms of real estates, medical insurance and such areas that will take the bulk of the strain off the public servants head.
Above all, Your Excellency you cannot give what you do not have and that means if salaries are to be paid regularly and on time there must be a ready source of income or revenue.
The National Revenue Authority, an institution that has been in the headlines of late should be made more efficient tan it is now. This has to be a project with short, medium and long term goals that will make it productive enough that Sierra Leone will move from a donor dependent to self sustaining economy.
Along with the provision of electricity, Your Excellency must be looking at the possibility of beginning to develop an electronic database that will be a national register of persons, businesses and assets of the Republic of Sierra Leone. It took the Transition committee a lot of time and work to get to where they got and a lot of information is missing or were destroyed because there is no National database from which those data could have been retrieved. This database will also make it possible for government to know the status of immigration ,births, deaths and every worker will have a social security number and it will be easy to know how is paying taxes and who is not. Above all it will make ghost workers something in the history books.
As of now there is no concrete data on how much revenue the state can make or how many businesses there registered in Sierra Leone, who is effectively paying taxes and who is not.
On the issues of taxes, I would advice that you set up a review commission now as it is, I am sure, less than 40% of the taxes that should be collected is what goes into the state’s coffers and a greater part, in percentage to the total potential tax payers, of this is income taxes from public servants. Also the quantum paid for most business activities are just not realistic, businesses ,foreign and local are looting the nation whilst those who serve are taking the blame for all that is going wrong.
When this area of the political economy is taken care of then your government can have the ability to pay realistic salaries and on time, undertake projects and service the social sector by maintaining hospitals, schools etc.
Finally Your Excellency, the state of Sierra Leone’s economy is such that you must encourage the development of a national think tank from all the stake holders in the sierra Leonean society .Openness and consultation must be your key to finding solutions because as per the present realities only Good’s grace, wisdom and frankness can make it better.
May God guide Your Excellency through these very challenging times and long live The Republic of Sierra Leone!
Yours Faithfully
Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
Subject: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: J
To: All
Date Posted: 06:47:25 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-107-88.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.107.88
Message:
Does the Bank of SL Governor-Nominee need to change his priorities?
- Thursday 15 November 2007.
Commentary
By Mohamed Jalloh.
As the new APC government moves to appoint Sierra Leoneans to fill positions in the all-important financial management functions in Sierra Leone’s economy, comments reportedly made by the nominee for Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Dr. Samura Kamara, at his parliamentary confirmation hearings, raise serious questions about whether he has the proper perspective required for the job.
According to the November 14, 2007 edition of the Awoko newspaper of SL: "The nominee to serve as Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Dr Samura Kamara, told the Appointments Committee that his vision would be to ensure domestic price stability and stable economic policy backed by a sound financial policy. Asked how he would be able to let the Leone be equaled to the dollar and when the country would have value for its money, Dr Kamara said if it were possible for the central bank to reverse that it would be fine. But stated that it was not possible as there were factors that drive the value of a currency. "It is every body’s wish to have a high value of the Leone but it cannot stand on its own without being supported by other factors," he said.
"What is more important than anything else," he went on "is the stability of the exchange rate. You will wake up tomorrow and the exchange rate is not erratic, then you look out for investors but the value also functions on the inflation."
Before analyzing the nominee’s surprising comments quoted above, I would like to commend the member(s) of parliament who raised the issue of the necessity of restoring the value of the Leone at the nominee’s confirmation hearings. It is a necessity that I explained, together with my learned friend, Jonathan M. Rose, in our published article in the Concord Times and at AllAfrica.com on January 30 this year, entitled "The Revaluation of SL’s Currency." Cf. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SALONEDiscussion/message/2339
In our article, we summarized the case for restoring the value of the Leone against the U.S. dollar as a prerequisite for the development of SL as follows:
"As the example of pre-World War II Germany attests, it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy. With a currency that has depreciated by more than 375,000 % since it was first devalued in 1979, and a people frequently ranked as the poorest in the world, SL’s economy is in dire crisis.
We believe that the single greatest contributor to SL’s economic crisis is the same one as that identified by one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, Lord John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain. In his seminal 1919 treatise, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," Lord Keynes accurately predicted that the destruction of the value of the German currency would precipitate a second world war, because, as he put it: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." For largely similar reasons, we believe SL’s economic crisis to be rooted in the debauchery of the country’s currency. Accordingly, we propose a never-before-tried measure in SL — the revaluation of Sierra Leone’s currency — as the cornerstone of an economic recovery program for our country. This proposal is aimed at reversing the unprecedented inflation and other distortions in SL’s economy in the wake of the 1979 devaluation and subsequent depreciation of the Leone that have made it virtually impossible to sustain economic growth or alleviate poverty."
It is a promising sign that the new parliament understands that the key to resolving SL’s economic problems lies most fundamentally in rehabilitating our country’s needlessly devastated currency. It is especially heartening to learn that the consciousness of Sierra Leoneans, in general, has now been raised to such a high level that the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL feels obliged to agree with a parliamentarian(s) that the current astronomical exchange rate of the Leone to the dollar is undesirable and, therefore, the value of our unnecessarily weakened currency, the Leone, needs to be restored.
However, it is rather disappointing to note that, even though the nominee reportedly believes that our country’s catastrophically weakened currency’s value should be rehabilitated, he expressed the view that it is impossible to do so — whereas, in our article, Jonathan and I clearly outlined how it is indeed possible to do so.
So, in response to the nominee’s unequivocal answer that he believes that it is impossible to achieve the desirable goal of restoring the value of the Leone, the parliamentarians on the Appointments Committee should have followed up his answer with two simple, but very important, questions, namely:
1. Why do you think it is impossible to achieve the desirable goal of reducing the catastrophically escalated exchange rate between the Leone and the U.S. dollar?
2. Given that you have already agreed that it is desirable to reduce the astronomically high exchange rate between the Leone and the dollar, why should we confirm your appointment to be Governor of the Bank of SL when, by your own admission, you do not believe it is possible to restore the exchange rate of the Leone to parity with the dollar (and thereby you will fail to significantly bring down the cost of living that has impoverished millions of Sierra Leoneans and made it impossibly expensive for Sierra Leoneans to effectively compete with foreigners in SL’s economy)?
In my humble opinion, if the nominee fails to answer the above questions satisfactorily, it would be eminently reasonable for the Appointments Committee to question whether he is the right man to be appointed governor of the Bank of SL at this particular time. This is because, currently, the greatest problem facing SL is not corruption, but the devastation of the value of the Leone that itself makes it all but certain that pervasive corruption among ordinary Sierra Leoneans would become a necessity for their literal survival.
Finally, the nominee needs to be asked to explain his statement that "[w]hat is more important than anything else is the stability of the exchange rate," which seems to suggest that he does not agree with the well-established economic principle that the rate of the exchange rate is more important in determining economic activity in a country than fluctuations in the exchange rate.
Thus, to say that "[w]hat is more important than anything else is the stability of the exchange rate," as the nominee is reported to have told the SL Parliament, is akin to someone telling a poor man: "What is important is not the actual price that you will pay for this food, but the fact that the price is stable." Under that scenario attested to by the nominee, there is no difference between a poor man paying $20 for a good and paying $2,000 for the same good, because, according to the nominee, "[w]hat is more important than anything else is the stability of the [price]." Which means, in the mind of the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL, as long as the price does not fluctuate, it makes no difference to him whether the price the poor are asked to pay for a good or service is $20 or $2,000.
Such a position is exactly opposite to that required to bring down the oppressive cost of living that has made virtual paupers of millions of Sierra Leoneans. Therefore, if the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL is serious about reducing the cost of living in SL — the number one priority of any serious government — he must change his view that it is impossible to restore the value of the devastated Leone to parity with the dollar. In addition, the nominee must change his view that the actual rate of exchange between the Leone and the dollar is not as important as the stability of the exchange rate.
If the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL does not change his positions, there is a high probability that, just as his predecessors did, he would fail to resolve the most pressing and pervasive current economic problem facing SL — massive, escalating inflation imported through the catastrophically high exchange rate of the Leone to the dollar which has impoverished millions of Sierra Leoneans and made it impossibly expensive for the average Sierra Leonean to effectively compete with foreigners in SL’s economy.
Editors Note: Moh’m Jalloh (photo), a native of Sierra Leone resident in Maryland, is the founding Managing Director of a financial services firm in suburban Washington, D.C., USA. The above article is adapted from his recent response to a fellow member of SALONEDiscussion, the pioneering Internet discussion forum dedicated exclusively to the serious discussion of issues related to SL with the aim of advancing the development of the country. SALONEDiscussion recently sent a compendium of recommendations to the President of SL that includes proposals for restoring the value of the Leone against the dollar, and for restoring electricity, water and sanitation services in SL. This newspaper will shortly be publishing excerpts from the compendium.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: John Mannah
To: All
Date Posted: 11:45:02 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: mannj703@newschool.edu
Entered From: pool-72-83-75-39.washdc.east.verizon.net at 72.83.75.39
Message:
I do not normally do this, i.e., participate in a Cocorioko discussion. However, this topic is too important to leave to ordinary folks. This is primarily because the problem of our nation's worsening financial condition and the long-run dismal fiscal outlook our country is faced with i.e. the three large and interrelated national deficits; the large government budget deficit, the growing balance-of-payments deficits and alarming personal savings deficits are worth the attention of serious minded Sierra Leoneans, and thus an applaud to Mr. Mohamed Jalloh for throwing some light on them in his article, with an aim of finding solutions to them.
While it is easy to dismiss government deficits and debts as someone else's problem, in my view, it is not, as we all have both a personal reason and a civic responsibility to be more informed and involved in this debate over our collective fiscal future, and thus the reason for my participation in this debate.
Dr. Samura Kamara, the Bank of SL governor designate's answer during his confirmation hearing that it is not possible for the leone to have parity with the dollar is correct, and that all the central bank has power to do is maintain some form of stability in our exchange rate with other international currrencies particularly the U.S. dollar.
This is because the exchange rate of a currency i.e. the amount of leones for example that is exhanged for the dollar is a function of the demand and supply of the currency meaning the leone. This mechanism is what determines the equilibrium price which at the moment is Le 3,000 to $1.00. If the demand or supply curve shifts due to endogeneous and extrogeneous factors such as changes in tastes for domestic and foreign goods in the nation and abroad, growth and inflation rates, changes in relative interest rates, etc, it will lead to depreciation or appreciation of the exhange rate. In Sierra leone where we have a flexible exchange rate system, if demand for dollars is higher than supply of dollars(due to an upward shift of the demand curve), the equilibrium price will change, which is known as depreciation. The commercial banks can save this situation by borrowing from the central bank i.e., the bank of SL as lender of last resort and if the bank has reserves, it can draw from its reserve to cushion the situation and avoid a free fall of the leone.
This is what Dr. Samura Kamara is talking about, that the central bank can only stabilize the value of the leone on an hour by hour, day by day, month by month basis, because it is subject to the dictates of the market not any magic wand or central control.
It also depends on trade elasticity of the demand and supply curves of the currency. If the curves are elastic, then there is a chance under full employment or near full employment of our resources, for a larger depreciation of the nations currency to shift domestic resources to the production of more exports and imports substitution, which will stabilze the currency in the long-run.
Thus in a dynamic and changing world, exchange rates frequently vary, reflecting the constant change in the numerous economic and social forces simultaneously at work.
So until we bring our chronic budget and fiscal deficits to some semblance of sanity through productivity growth and return to a balanced budget, we will never be able to start the hard work of improving on our exchange rate, not to talk about bring it to parity with the U.S. dollar.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Mahmud Mansaray
To: All
Date Posted: 13:08:19 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: f298781.ga.unc.edu at 152.4.31.217
Message:
This is the spirit. I love to see intellectuals displaying their ideas about development in Sierra Leone. I thank both Jalloh and Mannah for their special contributions and suggestions as to how currency stability in S/Leone could be achieved.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Yaya Fanusie
To: All
Date Posted: 16:03:07 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: saigobe@lanset.com
Entered From: pool-71-179-99-138.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net at 71.179.99.138
Message:
Mr. Mansaray,
I support your praise for both Jalloh and Mannah. And I like the very constructive way Mr. Mannah critique and support Mr. Jalloh. I am that Mr. Mannah put aside his dislike for Cocorioko and gave Sierra Leone as his priority instead of his own personal feelings standing in his way from taking part in the discussion. Mr. Mannah conduct is what should become the norm among us. Put personal hostility at bay focus on National interest. After that we can go back to the personal combat. I do not like both Jalloh and Mannah. If I run into them I will probably kick dem butts. But I listen to them when they are talking about helping the nation.
We should not let the personal issues prevent us from supporting good cause promoted by our personal enemies.
Let us always remember the distinctiion between the Persoanl and National interest. The private from the public good. Our people expect more from us who are comfortable, let us all help to make most of our people comfortable. They have experienced great pain and hardship. We must do our best to help them. The government can not do all. Good job Jalloh and Mannah but remember if you see me; run unless you yell " Public Intest" and I will hold back until we complete the Public Good then I am going boot you guys(Smiles).
Yaya Fanusie
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: True
To: All
Date Posted: 14:34:50 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-21-126-109.res.east.verizon.net at 70.21.126.109
Message:
Mahmud:
I feel the same like you. Siera leone needs a lot more home-grown economic analysis and a lt less foreign analysis. Let's hope the new APC leadership is litening to Moh'm Jalloh in a way the old APC of bandele never listened until 30 years after he first said devaluation is not good, and now even the Western economists are echoing his sayings from 30 years ago.
Mannah's new respect in debate is good for him too. Much better o have a healthy discourse than otherwise. Kudos to both of them.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
To: All
Date Posted: 12:45:00 11/17/07 ()
Email Address: jjmb012000@yahoo.co.uk
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
Mamhoud and True thanks for your peace building statements.What you guys said is what some of us should have said but we were very PAROCHIAL!!!!!!!!!!! and this is the problem in Sa. Lone!!!!!!!!
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 12:56:48 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
JOHN,
Nobody drove you from here. You decided to alienate yourself. Welcome.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Economist
To: All
Date Posted: 12:16:53 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Mannah, it is good to see you come to cocorioko to try to contribute to our discussions here. However, my advice to you if you want to engage in a debate with Moh'm Jalloh is to go to SALONEDiscussion where you will find both Moh'm and his co-author, Jonatham Rose in a forum where issues relATED TO Salone's development are discussed daily by very sharp Saloneans in a serious, dedorous environment.
For example, this morning Moh'm posted his reply to a similar question as yours in reply to Mohamed Boye jallo-Jamboria that he had first posted on the Patriotic Vanguard below in the comments section beneath his article. Go there and you will see what I am about to summarize for you from reading it on SALONEDiscussion this morming.
According to Moh'm, Samura is wrong in stating that it is impossible to retore the value of the leone to parity -- because he and Jonathan Rose had clearly outlined the admittedly difficult and time-consuming steps that can be taken which will achieve the result of the Leone being equal to the dollar. I advisen you to go read the article in the he currency because Concord times and AllAfrica.com. for January 30, 2007.
It is also not correct, as you stated, that Samura is right because the central bank can only stabilize the Leone on an hourly, daily, etc. basis because it is subject to market forces. If what you say is true, it would not be possible to devalue a cureency -- because devalaution, as Moh'm pointed out in another article in 2005, is simply an announcement by the government that the new exchange rate is what it says it nis. This is how Salone got the two tier system in 1979 under the APC-SLPP coalition govt. led by the the kleaqdersn of the twom parties, Siaka Stevesn and Finance minister Jusu Sheriff. So, you are very wrong, Mannah, i am sorry to say.
For me, I am convinced my the arguments presented in Moh'm and Jonathan Rose's article. They make peerfedct sense. And the two authors show how it can be done. I have not yet seen any one prove otherwise.
.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: J
To: All
Date Posted: 14:45:30 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-122-241.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.122.241
Message:
Moh'm Jalloh, this looks like one of your postings. Mannah has joined the forum again we are now going to see all sorts of names responding to Mannah maliciously. Stop this nonesense Moh'm. Some of us are tired of this sickning attitude of yours so please stop it now for God's sake.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: K
To: All
Date Posted: 15:07:38 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-21-126-109.res.east.verizon.net at 70.21.126.109
Message:
This looks like one of the foolish assumptions on this forum. Why do you SLPP cowards always assume that someone is after you? If it's not alieu, it's mohm, or kabs. only cowards hear footsteps behind them when no one is there.
if u can't contribute, why not just be quiet? At least we won't know how empty you are.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: J
To: All
Date Posted: 15:49:37 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-122-241.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.122.241
Message:
You are equally making foolish assumptions. If it's not John Mannah, it's SLPP or PMDC. I don't have to prove a thing to you. By the way have you ever had a mental problem?
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Dis Nar-crase
To: All
Date Posted: 11:55:01 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: adsl-068-153-138-168.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 68.153.138.168
Message:
At least Bra, Ee look lek say you go de right school en lan de right book.
Dis world yone economics (As oppose to Mohm world Mohmonomics), nar
so ee dae woke. At least ar know say nar de right world me dae.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Charlatt
To: All
Date Posted: 12:22:09 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Bra, you nor see say you are out of your league? Stop for smell the forum with your crase talk and bad hart.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: REFEREE
To: All
Date Posted: 09:25:41 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
I don't think Moh'm's intention was to challenge the governor-designate to a contest. More likely, it is just another of his usual advice to the govt. of salone that bhe regularly puts in the salone newspapers.
But if it came to a contest betwen Moh'm and the governor-to-be, that would not be a fair contest -- Moh'm is by far the more knowledgeable about exchange rate theories and especially devaluation in salone. In fact, I don't think there is anyone in salone or outside who knows as much about devalaution in salone like Moh'm does. I am not praising him. I am just telling you my opinion from reading his articles from the time I was at Albert Academy Form Six when I read Moh'm's Devaluation article in We Yone.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Dis Nar-crase
To: All
Date Posted: 11:06:57 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: adsl-068-153-138-168.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 68.153.138.168
Message:
Hmm… Revalue our currency without consideration of market forces,
economic production, or reserves as a number one priority rather than
build a solid productivity base to give value to the Leone. Sounds like
the kind of thing that Paul Pot or Idi Amin would think about but
hesitate to pronounce (and they were certifiable socio-paths). What
kind of economic theory is this? And this guy actually has adoring
fans? Has it occurred to him that the reason why the Leone was
devalued in the first place was that it was artificially been kept high by
a peg to the pound despite falling economic productivity? Has he
considered the effect on the black market, inflation, scarcity of goods
and foreign currency itself if this is done. Bo ous kin economics dis bra
study. Or ee jes need for get attention?
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Bad Hart
To: All
Date Posted: 11:24:37 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Den kine say wae porsin don hate een kompin, ar lek di man put Christian Dior perfume, di bad hart porsin go swear say ee smell bad scent!
Moh'm Jalloh's mastery of economics is easily ebident in a simple fact -- he has the ability to explain the most complex economic theories in simple, layman terms. While those "I smell bad scent" bad hart people will see it as a sign that Moh'm does not publish in opaque journals, those who can smell perfume when they smell it, see it as Moh'm's way of showing that bhe so understands his economics, he is able to make it understandable to the ordinary man.
My advice to you is to go and read the article by Johathan Rose and moh'm Jalloh. Hopefully you will understand it (if your bad hart does not get in your way). then you will see that all what you wrote is total nonsense because both gentlemen analyzed the conditions of supply (of foreign currency) min great detail, as well as import and local expenditure streams before making specific recommendations as to how and by what timing and safeguards the difficult restoration of the value of the Leone should be carried out.
But, like I said, you never saw that, because like the bad hart porsin wae go say ee smell bad scent wae di porsin wae ee hate rub perfume, you choose to see only what your bad hart allows you to see. You SLPPers are so unpatriotic, it's not funny. After eleven years of failed IMF-bootlicking policies, your SLPP govt. has managed to set a record that no other govt. in SL set: The country ranked last or next to last in every year of SLPP's incompetent and corrupt rule. And now here are two patriotic Saloneans trying to cure the problems you SLPP misfits left for the new APC govt, and what do you do?
Talk nonsense and spew bad hart rubbish. No wonder the people of salone kicked you out of ntheir sight into the dust bin of history where you belong. Ours is a NEW salone under the new APC. We don't have time for bad hart SLPP losers and traitors.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Dis Nar-complex
To: All
Date Posted: 11:42:03 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: adsl-068-153-138-168.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 68.153.138.168
Message:
Dat nar because you hero dae rub pafume for coba de rotten scent. Tell
am leh ee go wass. Nor to because man talk big book mean say nar
sense. Som pan we dae analize for we sef en dae smell de rotten unda de
pafume.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Dry Yai Coba Shame
To: All
Date Posted: 11:51:44 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
my friend, I have advised you to go read the two gentlemen's erudite article. After you have done so (I hope you will understand it this time), then come back and show me where they analyzed all the supply and demand variables they used to construct a recommended solution to rstorr the value of the Leone to parity with the dollar.
unless you do that (and hopefully succeed in understanding the article), stop continuing to display your bad hart here. I don't have time for people with bad hart.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Dis Nar-crase but seriously
To: All
Date Posted: 12:37:33 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: adsl-068-153-138-168.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 68.153.138.168
Message:
The difference is that in as much as bringing dollar parity to the Leone
can be AN objective, (and really the objective should be revitalizing the
economy and letting market forces dictate the fair value of the Leone)
it should not be confused with the means of achieving the objective.
This is where you and your mentor get confused and start barking at
the moon. The academic romanticism of dollar parity is completely
different from the operational realities of how we get there. Setting
dollar parity cannot be an operational means of bringing economic
revitalization. Rather economic revitalization can bring dollar parity
and more. If we try and reset the Leone, the goal posts are just going
to shift. Just thinking in such simplistic terms is well… irresponsible.
True it elevates the masses to the illusion of understanding these
complex issues and it might feel good. But we would rather you and
your mentor run into that brick wall alone than subject a nation to
simplistic personal economic fantasies. By the way read John Mannah’s
posting, it may be a bit more complex, but that is the reality. Not this
Mohmonomics for simpletons.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: From the Pot into the Fire
To: All
Date Posted: 13:11:04 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Like I said, you aare out of your league, whether you remain the bad hart lunatic or the wannabe economist! Crase man nar crase man, no matter which way u turn!
Listen, Dumbeh, if, as you claim in blissful ignorarance, changing the exchange rate cannot be the means of brinbnging economic revitatilization, why do countries devakue thgeir exchange rate -- meaning they target the exchange rate by making it cheaper as ameans of boosdting their exports and reducing their imports -- and thereby cure their balancd of payments deficit?
Do you see how stupid you are for trying to attempt to change fromm being a bad hart craseman to being a wannabe economist? Sad, like the Good Book says, there is greater fool than he (like you) who knows not that he is a fool!
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Sontem nar me crase but..
To: All
Date Posted: 13:31:22 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: adsl-068-153-138-168.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 68.153.138.168
Message:
Once again a simplistic analysis. So what is the term for the opposite
of devaluing the currency as you are proposing?...Hmmm
Why are you constantly giving devaluation senaria rather than
upvaluation?? examples. Could it be that the relationship is not linear?
Hmm... If and when you look into it, there are a whole host of reasons
why currencies get devalued (note the use of the passive tense Vs
loose their value) Very often the curency has been held artificially high
despite the market forces and at some point the country is forced into
a devaluation at par with its economic productivity, liquidity ect. There
is a correction to accomodate the market forces. Just look at what Gulf
states are doing now to unpeg their currencies from the dollar because
it was causing too much local inflation. You have to stabilize the
underlying ecomomy first and the exchange rate will take care of itself.
Sorry for shifting your orbit around this sun but it is time someone
showed you that it is not the center of the universe.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Boto Bata
To: All
Date Posted: 14:39:23 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-21-126-109.res.east.verizon.net at 70.21.126.109
Message:
"upvaluation?"
Is that a new word in SLPP-ese? It's certainly not economics.
What weed are you smoking? Get off his lunatic posturing and recognize your low limits, man! Like the man told you, you are out of your league. Stop cluttering the thread with your boto-bata talk. Your rasnts are of no consequence. But don' let that stop you from continuing o delude yourself. We want to learn from learned people, not hear from a certified nut who is so loony he does not even know he is lunatic.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Ah Ha
To: All
Date Posted: 16:44:38 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: disnarcrase@yahoo.com
Entered From: adsl-068-153-138-168.sip.asm.bellsouth.net at 68.153.138.168
Message:
So now I understand how someone could have proposed an idea like
forming a one party state in the name of national unity and those that
were not locked up were left nodding their heads. It was not because they
were afraid it was because they believed. Alas, some people do not seem
to have the capacity to think these things through and see the flip side of
the coin.
By the way, this has nothing to do with APC or SLPP it is just a bad idea
that may be well argued but impractical. If it was that easy we would all
be economists and every country would be valuing its currency in abstract
to what suits it. Unfortunately, that is not the way it works.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Dim Bulb
To: All
Date Posted: 17:20:32 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
You understand? please, let's dispense with jokes! maybe you "understand" gibberish like "upvaluation!" You still didn't tell me what "language" that apparition comes from! But, even tho you can't possible be expexted to know it, it is definitely not economics. But, why waste wata pan ducks back? You are just too dim a bulb to have any hope of understanding economics.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Kanforie Sorie Koroma
To: All
Date Posted: 10:11:59 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Let Mohamed Allie go to hell. He is a sore loser too.He has nothing to advice the APC government.
Subject: Re: Moh'm Jalloh v New Bank Governor
From: Jokes
To: All
Date Posted: 10:18:40 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Or Kanforie, try to behave yourself. This thread is nor for unserious people to make unserious comments. Since you have nothing to contribute, why not just sit back and try to learn from the discussion, if that's possible?
Subject: Kabbs, why did you delete the truth?
From: Neneh
To: All
Date Posted: 03:34:59 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: gateway-202.energis.gsi.gov.uk at 195.92.40.49
Message:
You konw, I was the least surprise to find that the piece I post about Sylvia had disapeared within few minutes...
Kabbs, please explain
Subject: Re: Kabbs, why did you delete the truth?
From: The Truth
To: All
Date Posted: 05:08:56 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: aor-sub2-080.ucc.ie at 143.239.203.80
Message:
Kabs-Kanu cannot handle the truth. While he has turned into a Jeliba for Ernest Koroma, Sylvia's Awareness Times is report very serious news. If after all this while Kabs-Kanu is competing with baby online newspapers like New People, then you know Cocorioko has been reduced to mediocrity. Awareness Times and New People edit their papers better, they read with fluidity. But Cocorioko, shioooor, you see the fat and apartment Sharing Khadi Sesay writing all sorts of bad english but still gets published in the APC propaganda rag.
Subject: Website of the President - Today is 15th
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 00:21:35 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
What's up, my dear?
http://www.statehouse-sl.org/
Subject: Re: Website of the President - Today is 15th
From: sheku kallon
To: All
Date Posted: 06:31:42 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: shekukal@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-105-124-181.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 76.105.124.181
Message:
They can't even maintain and continue with the official website of State House. If this is a sign of things to come we are in trouble. So so talk talk. But as it is said, empty cans make a lot of noise. I know those kind of people. They talk a good game but when pressed for substance, they can't deliver.
Subject: Re: Website of the President - Today is 15th
From: Jetty B.
To: All
Date Posted: 09:30:05 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-143-53-43.hsd1.va.comcast.net at 69.143.53.43
Message:
Sheku,
What you fail to realize is that, the web site was created by Sylvia Blyden for Kabba. It was not a state entity, Kabba compensated her with numerous I.T contracts for various ministries. Hence, now that Kabba is no longer in power, she has the sole right to manupilate the web site. However, it is needless to worry, you will soon see a new well developed web for state house.
Cheeeeeeeeeeeeers!
Subject: Re: Website of the President - Today is 15th
From: M. Alieu Iscandari Esq
To: All
Date Posted: 09:12:31 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
"empty cans make a lot of noise"
__________________________________________________________
Judging by the unpatriotic and unnationalistic "noise" coming from you lately, seems to me that you have aptly defined yourself here. what do you say.
Subject: Re: Website of the President - Today is 15th
From: Tabaca
To: All
Date Posted: 08:55:04 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: eduproxy2.k12.de.us at 167.21.254.12
Message:
Sheku,
You are right, and you are the empty can! You need to be a little more mature and civil in your approach to national affairs. Your one-sided complaints and raves and rants are both boring and absolutely useless. You will do yourself a favor if you approach things from a positive outlook rather than your constant pessimism.
Remember that such attitude is not good for your health and not good for the health of the nation. Chill out and celebrate the new positives and be hopeful over the things that do not seem to reach fruition as early as you expect.
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT KOROMA AND APC
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 20:45:59 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
I wish to use this opportunity to congratulate President Ernest Bai Koroma and the All People's Congress ( APC) on this great day for their wonderful achievement .
I pray that God Almighty will continue to bless you, give you more victory over your detractors and make you reign with wisdom and God's spirit.
Subject: Re: CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT KOROMA AND APC
From: Panlamp
To: All
Date Posted: 07:50:49 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 65.202.253.253
Message:
Aaaaaameeeeeen (Insha Allah Suma insha Allah)
I join with you Kabs in congratulating my townsman and promise to stand behind this honorable man and vow to put aside all the rhetoric aside in the name of THE LAND THAT WE LOVE OUR SIERRA LEONE. May Allah grant him wisdom and steadfastness to rule our nation.
Luntha Kara Bai
Subject: Re: CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT KOROMA AND APC
From: SP
To: All
Date Posted: 06:38:35 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ool-4576842a.dyn.optonline.net at 69.118.132.42
Message:
I HAVE LOST ALL RESPECT FOR YOU. YOU HAVE ZERO CREDIBILITY.
Subject: Re: CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT KOROMA AND APC
From: CREDIBILITY POLICE
To: All
Date Posted: 09:44:11 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
ZERO CREDIBILITY ONLY TO YOU. WHO DIED AND MADE YOU THE CREDIBILITY POLICE. TO HELL WITH YOU. YOU SLPP SLIME
Subject: Re: CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT KOROMA AND APC
From: sheku kallon
To: All
Date Posted: 06:27:23 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: shekukal@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-105-124-181.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 76.105.124.181
Message:
Blow pan di laybelleh ehn kiss butt.
Subject: Re: CONGRATULATIONS, PRESIDENT KOROMA AND APC
From: Truth Be said
To: All
Date Posted: 08:03:28 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
What is wrong with congratulating President Ernest Koroma . You, SLPPers are envious of the APC.If Berewa had won, you would not have considered it laybelleh to congratulate him.You SLPPERS HAVE A PROBLEM. When we see you, we have more reason to be extra glad for the APC'S VICTORY.
Subject: Congratulations Mr. President; Congratulations Sierra Leone.
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 20:26:49 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: sccadmin195189.scc.losrios.edu at 165.196.195.189
Message:
Greetings my brothers and sisters. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the President, government, people and friends of Sierra Leone for the peaceful transition of baton from the S.L.P.P. government, headed by President Ahmed Tejan Kabba to the A.P.C. of President Earnest Bai Koroma. I hope and pray that as God has granted us His Majesty to bring us a new leader through peaceful exercise of political maturity, He will constantly manifest Himself to guide him, his government and all Sierra Leoneans, and continue to remind our leader of His golden presence so that he will always consider himself not as a ruler but a servant of the people who has been chosen by God and them to lead us to prosperity.
Let me continue to admonish Sierra Leoneans to keep abreast that now is the time we, Sierra Leoneans should come together and rebuild our country. Since the start of time, no single person has been able to transform a government, a people and a nation without the loving, patriotic and dedicated contributions and direction from peers, family, friends or nation. As such, President Koroma who is mortal as you and I, needs our dedication, direction, participation and prayers now than ever.
Time there was when people have relied so much on governments to do everything for a nation. But we have come to realize that without an unequivocal dedication, unwavering participation and unfettered support of her nationals, no nation can stand to an admirable potential. Such national handicap has been exemplified through the embittered political dispositions of nationals of Sierra Leone, neglect of civic responsibilities and total reliance on governments that transformed and engulfed her in a tumultuous debacle that has continued to grasp our legs from striving for the prosperous nation we dreamed her to be.
Despite this sadness, we have a dream. To achieve this dream, we must put aside whatever bitterness we have, turn-over a new leaf and find out what we can do to accomplish whatever this dream might be. Bur it is not enough to dream without going after our dreams. To say we are Sierra Leoneans will be meaningless if we cannot participate meaningfully in her growth and share the problems that lie along the path. We can never be proud to say we deserve what is Sierra Leone’s when we sit-on-the-fence. We must be active and meaningful participants in her rediscovery. It is not going to be easy but it can be done, collectively.
Therefore, I challenge every Sierra Leonean to dream of a specific development that they would want to see in their areas, communities, chiefdoms, sections, townships and villages. But not only that, we must embark on accomplishing such a dream. I challenge every Sierra Leonean to talk to another Sierra Leonean about such a dream and make a move to start the procession towards making a meaningful change for the named areas and for Sierra Leone. Until we do, we shall never know how much determination and willingness we each bore for change and we shall never realize such a change.
Moreover, let us always remind ourselves that we are the government, and that members of Parliament and the cabinet are our leaders. Let us also think that change must start with us. Any change the majority of Sierra Leoneans and friends of Sierra Leone desire such a change will reflect on the government and ultimately the country if we start by changing us. So let us change for the better to change Sierra Leone.
In closing, let me once more congratulate the President, the government, Sierra Leoneans and friends of Sierra Leone for this peaceful transition. I see a prosperous Sierra Leone.
Thank you.
Let us unite. United we stand divided we fall. I love you all, God bless us all.
Subject: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Sheku Kallon
To: All
Date Posted: 20:02:14 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: shekukal@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-105-124-181.hsd1.ga.comcast.net at 76.105.124.181
Message:
IMF PRONOUNCES THAT SLPP STEWARDSHIP OF THE ECONOMY WAS EXEMPLARY AND THAT THE APC INHERITS A ROBUST ECONOMY THAT WILL GROW. At the conclusion of its visit to Sierra Leone, the mission chief announced that output growth continues to be robust, the agricultural and mining sectors continue to be buoyant, and economic growth stands at an impressive 7%. the mission advises the government to increase revenue and preserve macroeconomic stability while providing essential services. the IMF concluded by re-stating its commitment to working with the Sierra Leone government. I wonder what the APC will leave behind after 5 years in office
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Hassan Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 08:20:09 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: kamson10@hotmail.com
Entered From: dsl092-165-252.wdc2.dsl.speakeasy.net at 66.92.165.252
Message:
SHEKU KALLON,
You fail to realized that the IMF pronouncement is based on rag tag numbers provided by your criminal SLPP ministers. The indicators used by the IMF were not variable from independent sources, like the suffering masses that endure the hardship caused by the defunct SLPP.Complementary statements by international financial institutins should be visible not hidden like the case of Sierra Leone. I therefore ask that you go to Freetown and do your assessment of the standard of living of the average Sierra Leonean and compare it with your so call IMF complemetary statement.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 04:50:58 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthonysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 218.189.231.87
Message:
Good, these are the sort of lights that need to be shed on the outgoing SLPP regime for APC to realize that the SLPP regime in general did well other than their lacks in providing constant electricity, good water supply and proper waste management. We hope APC will even raise the bar.
Do you know that SL is now one of the few countries in Africa with mammogram machine for scanning for breast cancer? All the credit goes to the SLPP.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: The guy next door
To: All
Date Posted: 07:01:00 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: col-208223.limited.com at 63.72.208.223
Message:
For God's sake Mr. was Solo. B part of these accomplishments?
Could he not have ran on these results?
Thank God he did not become President, it would have been catastrophic.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Loosing Team
To: All
Date Posted: 00:58:55 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe-74-66-237-26.nyc.res.rr.com at 74.66.237.26
Message:
It is hard to predict Koroma's relationship with the IMF or forecast his economic legacy when his tenure is over;
However,economic performance aside,one thing is certain!
Come 2012,Earnest Koroma will defeat SLPP again if Loosers like JJ Blood and UNS Jah maintain control of SLPP Party.
In that case politics will bear more relevance to the outcomes of 2012 than economics..I think!
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 00:18:54 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
I don't want to be cynical about the IMP report. However, one cannot ignore the following:
How does the 7% translate into the everyday lives of our people? May be it should have been 15% for SL if the SLPP had not being criminally negligent and inefficient in the fight against corruption.
You talk to the oridinary Sierra Leonean, it is just a pure number game. It is similar to being the most democratic country in the world but the majority of its citizens living below 2 pence a day. It is meaningless, and it is like chasing the wind.
The people have spoken, SLPP did achieve some progress but not enough to warrant a third term. My humble advice to SLPP, go back to the drawing board and revisit and address your inefficiencies, negligence and incompetencies. Otherwise, I the die is already cast in 2012 the way Ernest is handling the poor infrastructure SLPP left behind.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 09:44:18 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd284236.netvigator.com at 203.218.74.236
Message:
I am not sure whether you are really aware of the ruins APC turned SL into. The genius you are claiming to have appeared in EBK is relatively unknown and the devil you know is better than that the angel you don't know.
We all have track records if you think it is the most important for you. EBK's first move is a bogus and empty move, alias "ma gee gee." It will not be sustainable and it is divisive and liable to fail. Remember! "United we stand divided we fall."
What are his remarks after visiting Bumbuna? "Let us know whether the project can be completed soon or we abandon it." What does he meant by abandon? You mean you can work on a project for three to four decades only to abandon it at the end? What a careless comment from a president!
Let me give you another blunder of your so-called Messiah. In late Alima's incident, some stupid and unruly thugs stunned innocent Lebanese, what did your intelligent leader do? Was there any public apology to the Lebanese?
To say that there will be 24 hours of electricity by December without creating ways to sustain it is a bogus statement.
The country was almost at the point of committing suicide when SLPP took over, yes they did not provide electricity, clean water supply and proper waste management, but the country was heading in the right direction. Now! Let your giant give us the leap and I hope he does not take us to war again.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Albert Moinina
To: All
Date Posted: 10:44:01 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 213.42.21.154
Message:
Let me respond quic quic one,
1. I never said EBK is a genius. Sierra Leone does not need a genius leader, but a patriotic one taking strides to bring purpose and meaning to our poor people.
2. The SLPP devil is too scary to live with. I would rather have an angel I don't know. Life is full of choices and chances. Everyday we are making decisions that bounder with the "devil you know and the angel you don't know". All we need is wisdom and understanding in dealing with such matters.
3. I don't understand EBK's "ma gee gee" move that makes us divided. It can be deduced from the utterances of some SLPP members, they would do whatever and however to REMAIN DIVIDED and blame it on APC as divisive. It is your choice and I don't believe EBK is that kind of a leader. The main base of the APC is in the North and one would therefore expect a northern majority in the new government.
4. Apologise to the Lebanese? The right approach is for the law to take its course. Is it not the responsibility of the police to deal with lawlessness? When did it become the job of the President to go around houses, communities, towns and villages apolizing for the wrong of lawless citizens?
5. The temporary electricity supply is a one year measure which will likely coincide with the completion of Bumbuna. Man take tem now nor with your statements.
6. Yes, I agree with you that the country was heading in the right direction. My question though is this: would you travel on snails back from Freetown to Kailahun when you have the option to go on foot, by bicycle, car or plane?
7. MY SUGGESTION ONCE AGAIN TO ALL SLPP SUPPORTERS, PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER IT IS MESSY.
In conclusion, in my considered view, SLPP is history and it members have not learnt from their horrible and terrible mistakes. You are still throwing mud at anybody and everybody who dare question your failed organisation.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 11:11:03 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd186061.netvigator.com at 203.218.31.61
Message:
"The SLPP devil is too scary to live with. I would rather have an angel I don't know. Life is full of choices and chances."
Huge mistake, you will be like a prostitute who is ready to open up to a nice gentleman carrying the deadliest virus.
"The main base of the APC is in the North and one would therefore expect a northern majority in the new government."
Yes you could be right, but we are not looking for this type of government. We want the president to scout the whole country for the best candidate. And don't tell me that the best are all in the north.
"Apologise to the Lebanese?"
Yes, it is the president's position to apologise to the lebanese and assure them that his administration will not accept any lawlessness.
"The temporary electricity supply is a one year measure which will likely coincide with the completion of Bumbuna."
You are wrong, we need at least half a decade more to complete Bumbuna. Any backup plan?
"My question though is this: would you travel on snails back from Freetown to Kailahun when you have the option to go on foot, by bicycle, car or plane?"
And who do you thing is going to let me fly at will?
"MY SUGGESTION ONCE AGAIN TO ALL SLPP SUPPORTERS, PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER IT IS MESSY"
The house was in order until you broke in to rub.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Anthony Sisay
To: All
Date Posted: 09:41:38 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: anthnoysisay@yahoo.com
Entered From: pcd172062.netvigator.com at 203.218.17.62
Message:
I am not sure whether you are really aware of the ruins APC turned SL into. The genius you are claiming to have appeared in EBK is relatively unknown and the devil you know is better than that the angel you don't know.
We all have track records if you think it is the most important for you. EBK's first move is a bogus and empty move, alias "ma gee gee." It will not be sustainable and it is divisive and liable to fail. Remember! "United we stand divided we fall."
What are his remarks after visiting Bumbuna? "Let us know whether the project can be completed soon or we abandon it." What does he meant by abandon? You mean you can work on a project for three to four decades only to abandon it at the end? What a careless comment from a president!
Let me give you another blunder of your so-called Messiah. In late Alima's incident, some stupid and unruly thugs stunned innocent Lebanese, what did your intelligent leader do? Was there any public apology to the Lebanese?
To say that there will be 24 hours of electricity by December without creating ways to sustain it is a bogus statement.
The country was almost at the point of committing suicide when SLPP took over, yes they did not provide electricity, clean water supply and proper waste management, but the country was heading in the right direction. Now! Let your giant give us the leap and I hope he does not take us to war again.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: SIERRA LEONEAN
To: All
Date Posted: 21:53:42 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-68-49-205-105.hsd1.va.comcast.net at 68.49.205.105
Message:
ONE OF THESE DAYS, SHEKU KALLON, YOU ARE GOING TO END UP WITH A HEART ATTACK FIGHTING HARD FOR A USELESS PARTY. LISTEN, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE IMF SAYS, THE PEOPLE OF SIERRA LEONE HAD SPOKEN: THE SLPP IS NOT WORTH THEIR TRUST.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: ALPHA SAIDU BANGURA
To: All
Date Posted: 21:42:57 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: SAIDUBANGSO@AOL.COM
Entered From: c-76-111-106-54.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.111.106.54
Message:
Sheku, the only thing the APC will do to our now strong economy is kill it by embezzling state funds. To prove me right, please, check the past records of most of their ministers and deputy ministers, you will see that most of them have criminal backgrounds.
The APC does not have the desire to improve our economy, all its members are now ready to enrich themselves at the detriment of the whole nation.
OH GOD SAVE OUR COUNTRY,SIERRA LEONE FROM THE ALL PURPOSE CRIMINALS(APC) AMEN.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 22:07:39 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
"To prove me right, please, check the past records of most of their ministers and deputy ministers, you will see that most of them have criminal backgrounds".
Dear Alpha Saidu Bangura,
I am terribly sorry to inconvenience you sir but, if it's no bother at all, can you please provide a link to a site where I can check the recofds of the ministers and deputy ministers to see if they really have criminal backgrounds like you informed us? I will really appreciate it.
Eagerly waiting for the link,
Sincerely,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Tabaca
To: All
Date Posted: 09:00:03 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: eduproxy2.k12.de.us at 167.21.254.12
Message:
Aminata,
Do not bother yourself, Alpha has no way to substantiate anything he says. He is plain and simple an ignorant guy who says everything frivolously before he even thinks. He is society's loud mouth nonentity.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: MORON DETECTOR
To: All
Date Posted: 10:10:00 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
somebody must ask this fellow who calls himself "alpha" which is not his given name, but chosen to make us believe that he is close to the muslim religion while his attitude is very satanic and unislamic.Ask him what happened to the money he stole from the Prince of Wales Old Boys Association while he was in freetown. Ask him how his father survived if it was not from duping other people. Ask him how his mother got fired from her job. It was for THEFT and fraudulent practices. FUCK THIS MORON
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 03:20:38 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
Aminata: If you are a lady, then you are too smart for Alpha. Alpha will not be able to provide the "criminal record" he claimed.
If he does it will have to be an
official records and not stories. You have trapped him.
Let us waite to see what he will come up with next.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: FINANCE MAN
To: All
Date Posted: 20:31:37 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: makeni_one@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-114-235-58.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.114.235.58
Message:
Unless you have researched the IMF and World Bank in detail, then you must be careful to accept what they say. Anything they (World Bank and IMF) say should be accepted at face value until analyzed microscopically. Some of these reports are bias and may focus on only the good while ignoring the bad. Don’t get carried away by the big names. They are in the business to make a profit, and they prey on the weak, Sierra Leone included. We have to start conducting our own research, and to verify any statistics reported by the aforementioned. You [they] cannot be the bank, the regulator, as well as the collector and the reporter. Who audits who? We need independent Think Tanks to do the dirty work for our governments who are at the mercy of these banks. My God help us.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 20:22:57 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
IMF praises SLPP handling of economy...
Sierra Leoneans cuss out SLPP for pillaging, AKATAing and ruining the economy. Go figure...
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Insideman
To: All
Date Posted: 05:23:32 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pslux.cec.eu.int at 158.169.9.14
Message:
Ha, IMF praises SLPP for achieving 7% grouth? Big news, how did IMF get that info? Oh diplomatic jargons, as far as the international organisations that i know in coutry are concerned the curroption rate of the SLPP is the worst they have ever seen and if we had given them another chance, the country would have just collapsed, were is the 7% grouth when close to elections the internations bodies here refused to relaese money to the budget? who was paid a salary? none why did the 7% grouth rate not have been surficient enough to address most of the economic problems of this small country? rather still begging on donors not to discontinue budget support. Mr. Kallon you should be ashame to post these articles. IMF making profit in SL just any other poor country will not want to tell SL that they have failed to meet their targets, because they never wanted corrupt African governments to change. My friend IMF and World Bank are not in Africa to help but make sure they keep us at the current poverty level that we are. Wait and see if the current government desides to prove well in the eyes of the ordinary person in Sierra Leone, you will see all negative reports from them. Mr. Sheku i stay in SL and i know that there is no 7% growth rate.
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: APC
To: All
Date Posted: 05:31:54 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: aor-sub2-080.ucc.ie at 143.239.203.80
Message:
So tell you APC thieves to kick them out. Moron
Subject: Re: IMF Praises SLPP Handling of Economy What will APC Do
From: Insideman
To: All
Date Posted: 06:12:43 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pslux.cec.eu.int at 158.169.9.14
Message:
Are you offended because you now know the truth? I dont think they will be kicked out but they will be regulated. We dont need them to control SL if our economy is good. think again my friend.
Subject: Why the White Wigs
From: Erica Adams
To: All
Date Posted: 19:28:16 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: ericamonique82@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-074-185-005-235.sip.clt.bellsouth.net at 74.185.5.235
Message:
I have held my tongue on this for long enough. Does anyone see the wigs the justices wear as ridiculous other than me? I believe it was last week when people wanted to down the Creoles for not taking on African names, but meanwhile grown men are decked out in lengthy white wigs under the blazing sun. That's something left over from colonization that really needs to be done away with.
Subject: Re: Why the White Wigs
From: Africanist
To: All
Date Posted: 19:47:55 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 164.82.85.3
Message:
Colonial legacy......Not unique to Salone.
How about some African KUFFIS for a change?
Subject: Re: Why the White Wigs
From: Looking in
To: All
Date Posted: 19:40:33 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: nc-76-0-180-227.dhcp.embarqhsd.net at 76.0.180.227
Message:
hahahha. I thought I was the only one. I suppose it is tradition. Tradition is not so bad. (wiping tears from my eyes).
Subject: Final Transition Report
From: Freetong Pikin
To: All
Date Posted: 19:19:33 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 80-45-43-34.static.dsl.as9105.com at 80.45.43.34
Message:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7092861.stm
Source:bbc
Widespread corruption and mismanagement are revealed in a confidential presidential audit in Sierra Leone exclusively obtained by the BBC.
Newly-elected President Ernest Bai Koroma commissioned the report.
It catalogues grave inadequacies in key areas such as health care, tax collection and the security services.
And it provides a unique and searingly frank insight into the sometimes opaque business of running a poor African nation through years of war and chaos.
One arm of government, for example, is alleged to have lent more than $1m (Ł480,000) to an unspecified recipient in the few months before the recent handover of power.
"We would advise," the report says coldly, "an investigation into the reasons for the loan".
'Miserable state'
At one ministry, the report seen by the BBC says, a project worth almost $500,000 was apparently financed by an international donor - but the money never reached the intended recipients.
New president to fight graft
The Sierra Leonean Ministry of Agriculture is described as having "almost zero productivity" at the lower levels of employment.
Financial accounts are reported to have gone missing from many ministries and the culture of record-keeping is generally said to be "in a miserable state".
These findings might not be surprising to anyone who lives in Sierra Leone or any number of poor nations that have been through such chaotic times.
But what is unusual about this report is to have the problems set out so clearly - and in a way that may ultimately put the credibility of the presidency at stake.
In the 10 years I have been visiting this beautiful, friendly, but exasperating country, I have lost count of the number of times decent and honest Sierra Leoneans have told me corruption was their greatest problem.
Huge challenges
The confidential presidential report obtained by the BBC acknowledges corruption as "the greatest impediment to the country's development".
Newly-elected President Koroma has said dealing with corruption is his mantra; Sierra Leoneans may now take him, and judge him, at his word.
Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, is very slowly recovering from a decade of brutal war that ended in 2001.
But it still faces huge challenges.
The war started in 1991 when rebels crossed from Liberia and took Sierra Leone's diamond fields.
The rebels initially benefited from widespread dissatisfaction with corrupt government in Freetown - which they successfully used as a rallying call to unemployed, frustrated youth.
More questions
After years of widespread atrocities, the rebels were eventually defeated by a United Nations peacekeeping force and a separate intervention by the British army.
This year the country held elections that were seen as fair and were won by the opposition.
There has been a peaceful handover of power to President Koroma.
The transition was, by Sierra Leonean standards, a model of tolerance and fair play.
But President Koroma has inherited a bankrupt nation which is riddled with corruption.
This report shows what a mountain he has to climb.
It is common for African politicians to accuse governments of corruption when they are in opposition.
But they often fall into the same habits when they take power.
President Koroma's toughest test will be to show Sierra Leoneans not only that he is different, but that he can change the decades-old habits of almost everyone in government.
The confidential audit obtained by the BBC must make sobering reading for President Koroma. It is a picture of an economy in crisis.
But the report also raises more questions than it answers.
These questions include:
Will those responsible for past corruption be prosecuted?
Will any prosecutions be seen as a "witch hunt" - and potentially backfire?
What safeguards could stop future corruption?
What was the role of donors, especially the largest donor, Britain, while corruption flourished?
How will the new government address the twin problems of an impoverished countryside and a corrupt capital city - which was one of the original causes of the war?
A frank report on corruption is one thing, Sierra Leoneans may say; solving the problems it highlights is another.
Subject: Like it or not, COCORIOKO is the best
From: Standard
To: All
Date Posted: 19:04:29 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Whether people like it or not, Cocorioko is the best newspaper. If Awareness Times was all that great, it could have saved its benefactor, SOLO B, during the elections. As it were, it was Cocorioko who succeeded in providing a President for Sierra Leone. That one achievement by Cocorioko will stand for life. During the past, it was Cocorioko that provided all the scoops and breaking news. Even today, though AT first produced the inauguration pictures, Cocorioko soon followed up with their own. I don't see what the big deal is hereabout who came out first .If you think that is how to advertise your paper, you are wrong. Standard Times and Awoko belong to a far better class and pedigree than Awareness Times but have they published their own pictures yet ? No. Does that mean that AT conquered them ? Only the childish will say so.
COCORIOKO has triumphed over Awareness Times and the New People by helping the provide the President. Awareness Times and the New People provided a big, fat loser, Solo B.
If I were Kabs, I will be gloating about that. His failure to gloat about that is responsible for all this noise. Gloat about it, Kabs. You are a winner.You supported APC. APC gave SLPP an unforgettable thrashing. That makes you the best of the pack.
Subject: Re: Like it or not, COCORIOKO is the best
From: AFair Dolphin
To: All
Date Posted: 23:19:14 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cpe-67-49-46-215.socal.res.rr.com at 67.49.46.215
Message:
I believe that Cocorioko is a very good source of information for Diasporans and Awareness Times also has a very good layout and valuable information and photos
And about who triumphed over who, I think neither Awareness Times nor Cocorioko should gloat or claim victory because their impact do not go a long way as to influence the outcome of an election. Kabs Kanu is a good man and is providing us valuable info and a forum for people to let off steam. However, Blyden with her past and all is still providing the same opportunity for folks out here to connect with Sierra Leone. They don't need to be enemies and gloating, and who is better do not any way or fashion necessary.
APC did not give SLPP a good thrashing. The people of Sierra Leone did and if democracy prevails, they will do the same to APC when or if they mess up
God bless Koroma
God bless our country
Subject: Re: Like it or not, COCORIOKO is the best
From: SLPP
To: All
Date Posted: 07:10:29 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
APC AND THE PEOPLE OF SIERRA lEONE gave SLPP a good thrashing and it will take decades for SLPP to be in contention. They should think of 2-3 elections from now which will be 15 to 20 years. I cannot imagine that the people of Sierra Leone will be that naive to give the SLPP a chance so soon.So, Mr. Kabs Kanu and owners of this forum, you better get used to the rampage of the SLPP losers.
Subject: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Sengbe
To: All
Date Posted: 18:05:55 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 198.85.63.254
Message:
Good day one and all!
My hiatus from "Saro fora" after almost ten years in cyberspace was pleasantly interrupted by the report card submitted by ex-President Kabba, the leader of the erstwhile SLPP-led GoSL, to incoming President Ernest Koroma of the APC-led GoSL.
As a staunch member of the more CIVILIZED and democratically-inclined SLPP I could not pass up on the opportunity to debunk, and outrightly deflate, some of the prominent LIES, HALF-TRUTHS, INNUENDOES, MALICIOUS GOSSIP / 'DENSAYS' that our opponents smeared the internet with during the period of electioneering, and up to the present time by a bunch of cynical hypocrites masquerading as political pundits in the national interest, when in fact theirs was / is punditically pungent. Some of us could smell and discern the putrefaction in the hypocritical propaganda war they waged on the incumbency, but the masses could not, so thye voted them in.
The opportunity to carry out this noble task was presented to me (again) when I read HE Kabba's outgoing speech on the inauguration of Ernest Koroma, as the elected president of my mother country. In this regard, I will attempt to state the LIE, followed by a refutation of that particular lie through the words of HE Kabba - thanks in part to the journalistic prowess of my BabySista, and her team:
THE LIES:
SLPP is not willing to accept defeat. No progress was made under the SLPP. Our people are still poor and hungry. No roads. No electricity. No schools. No hospitals. Babies dying with 'bangbellies'. Minister X bought a mansion in Kent, England, worth millions of pounds sterling with an underground garage, and fifty cars. Blah! blah! blah!
The SLPP is indeed magnanimous in defeat as well as in victory. Let me quote HE Kabba to prove this point:
HE TK: "...This is a unique and momentous occasion in the history of our country, as it is the first time that a constitutionally elected government is handing over authority to a constitutionally elected successor. I would like at the outset to congratulate you on behalf of my outgoing government and on my own personal behalf on your election to the highest office of the land and wish you every success in your tenure of office as President of the Republic of Sierra Leone..."
"...My statement today should be regarded as a form of handing-over report. I have taken note with full agreement of your desire that out-going ministers of my Government present to yours proper handing-over reports. I am pleased to learn that the process went through satisfactorily. Consequently, my suggestions and recommendations should be properly interpreted as arising out of my experience as President of our country..."
This quote below reflects the starting point for the new GoSL. Reading this quote will prove to all and sundry that a high threshold for national development has been inherited by the "new kids on the block", and that the kitty is not barren, as was the case when the SLPP took over a bankrupt state at war.
HE TK: "...Today, you are inheriting a state that is on the threshold of taking off for the progress and prosperity that lie ahead for our people. Since the war came to an end, the security of the state has been maintained through the restructuring of the security sector with the assistance of the United Kingdom government and improvements in the conditions of service for the security forces. Local government authority has been restored, a more effective justice system is being gradually built; a more proactive stance and increased vigilance from responsible civil society groups and the satisfactorily informed general public is increasingly contributing to the building of a more transparent and accountable society. Many projects have been put in place to create jobs particularly for unemployed youths..."
"...I understand that you have visited the Bumbuna hydro electric project and have seen the state of progress for yourself. In the meantime, measures to further improve the electricity situation in the capital city are currently in progress with the help of the Moroccan technical team..."
[Please note here that if the pledge to light up Rokiamp by December 20, 2007 by the new folks bears any fruits,then they must thank HE Kabba, and his SLPP government for ensuring that pledge.]
"... Schools have been rebuilt, hospitals refurbished and new ones under construction. New diagnostic equipment is being installed that will now significantly reduce the need for people to travel abroad for medical attention..."
And they said the SLPP government of Pa Kabba did not attend to the roads!! Oh! what BUNKUM!!
"...With regard to roads, as soon as the war ended, my government assiduously embarked upon the task of repairing and restoring the road network with the help of the Kuwaiti Fund, BADEA, World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank and the European Union..."
"...The following roads have either been constructed or are under construction: the Koribondo-Blama-Gendema Ferry Road in the South; Makeni-Kamakwie road in the North; Kurobola-Kabala axis and the Masiaka-Makeni road also in the North. Work is in progress on several other roads such as the Masiaka-Bo road mainly in the South and the Tokeh-Lumley road in the Western Area, thereby completing the Waterloo-Freetown/Peninsular road..."
"...Funding has been secured for several planned road projects such as the Bo-Kenema road; Kenema-Koindu road; Makeni-Matotoka road; Matotoka-Koidu road; the Rogbere Junction-Pamelap road; the Songo-Moyamba road and the Moyamba-Moyamba Junction road. With regards to the Hillside Bye-Pass Road that will run behind Pademba Road Prison and exit behind Kissy Road Cemetery, delay in starting this project has been too long with protracted negotiations with property owners..."
"...We also have funding for the construction of 1,150 kilometer of feeder roads throughout the provinces, as an integral part of our food security programme..."
HE TK is showing such magnanimity, as opposed to the thuggery, intimidation, violence, and lies imposed on our party members by the so-called "new kids on the block" still wearing their red caps instead of the national colours (GWB). Please read on to see my point:
"...Further, I strongly recommend to you Mr. President, to pay particular attention to the Kenema-Koindu road, for which funding is secured from four Arab countries and OPEC, and tender documents are under preparation. The Kenema-Koindu road deserves special mention. Apart from its strategic and security importance, the Koindu market came into existence in 1932, the year in which I was born, that is over 75 years ago. It was an initiative of the people who lived in the area bordering Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. It developed into a full scale international market attracting traders from as far as the Ivory Coast. It would not be an exaggeration to state that it was the precursor of our Mano River Union today which only came into existence in 1975.
Two years ago Parliamentarians, elders and prominent citizens on either side of the Moa/Makona River, formed the Makona River Union. Its second general assembly in Koindu was graced by the heads of State of the three countries. At that summit a resolution was presented by the Assembly to further consolidate the Union. In addition to the international market in Koindu, a Technical/Vocational Institute and a General Referral hospital in Foya Kama in Liberia and in Nongowa in Guinea respectively were recommended.
The National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) has already allocated seed money for the construction of a modern international market in Koindu. Your Excellency may wish to pursue this matter further with your colleagues especially after your recent interaction with them..."
Roads! Roads!! and more roads!!!
"...Let me also add that feasibility studies for the Freetown-Lungi link road, the Lungi-Port Loko road and the Bandajuma-Mano River Bridge road have been completed and it is now urgent to secure funding for their construction. Perhaps, you may want to consider the involvement of the private sector for the early construction of the Freetown-Lungi link road in the context of a toll-system arrangement..."
The SLPP GoSL inherited FAILED STATE. I must state here that the SLPP-led GoSL did a remarkable job that was not totally brought to the attention of the general public at home and in the diaspora. Hence the motivation for undertaking this task on this forum.
"...Mr. President, all of this is a far cry from what we inherited when we came into office in 1996. We took over from a military regime at a time when a brutal war was still raging, to be followed by a coup by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which eventually brought the economy to shambles, the country bankrupt and basic infrastructure completely destroyed..."
Can the new APC really brag about the meagre infrastructure the old apc instituted in the 24 years of their gross misrule, when everything tangible in this regard was destroyed by the rebels and sobels for eleven years until said infrastructure was resuscitated, and / or restored by the SLPP government of Pa Kabba? At least at this point in time, the new APC has a working blueprint, model, and the means to start off on the road to development. Let us see and gauge what they do under their watch in their first and only term they will serve. Unu nor habhope oh!! Look at their present FCC record as their model! Freetong still dorty.
We lef sometin nar the kitty. Will the akartas do the same after five years? I doubt it. Please read on:
HE TK: "...My Government inherited a public debt of US$1.6 billion. With stringent financial practice, today, we enjoy total debt relief and over Le.500 billion at the Central Bank for use by your Government..."
Sound advice:
"...Therefore, the role and responsibilities of a president in a country that is just emerging from conflict are enormous and particularly challenging. Throughout my presidency, I was guided by four main principles:
1) seek the interest of the state;
2) secure the welfare of the people;
3) create opportunities to enable the people to realize their potential; and
4) build national cohesion.
You may wish to consider these principles in formulating your programme for moving our country forward..."
Sengbe alluded to this theme several years ago:
Our diversity is supposed to be our strength, and not our weakness as a nation. Therefore, we must use it wisely in striving to ensure that our pockets of cultural homogeneities buttress our national diversity / heterogeneity, in ways that would enhance our cohesiveness as a nation.
Please read what Pa Kabba says in this regard:
"...In a diverse society such as ours, with many ethnic and other groups, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, the greatest challenge is how to bring about national cohesion so that everyone in his or her own little way can contribute to the development of the state.
During my tenure of office, I endeavoured to make my government as inclusive as possible so that every section could have a stake in the security of the state. At one time, for the sake of peace, I even included former rebels who had been waging war on the state and killing our people..."
Based on what we are reading, seeing, and hearing, presently, we are in for the hegemonic tendencies of their lot, which they callously, and hypocritically ascribed to us. They know whom they are in the NW of Sa Lon.
We say peace, love, harmony, reconciliation, and non-violence. They say lawlessness, violence, intimidation, and thuggery. Mek dem nor make hunter go back nar the bush oh!!!
HE TK: "...We are emerging from a bitterly contested election that threatened the very essence of our state with confrontations, intimidations and harassment among party supporters. One of your biggest challenges will be how to reconcile all of these opposing groups and heal whatever frictions and misunderstandings that may have been created by the electoral process. On that score, I hereby openly declare my willingness to offer you any assistance you might need because the peace and cohesion of this country have always been among my principal objectives..."
"...The security forces were highly acclaimed for their impartiality and professionalism during the elections, but there have been recent allegations, particularly with reference to the police about not being evenhanded. All efforts must be made to remove such doubts. These notwithstanding, I am still proud of our police as they have many good and committed officers. We enjoin the military to continue as a well-organized, disciplined and professional entity. I have no doubt that they have the capacity to safeguard the integrity of the state and to protect the life and property of its citizens..."
Phock the Saro police!!
Their BIGGEST LIE - "SLPP-led GoSL is/was the most corrupt government in the history of S/Leone." Bull-kaka!!
Let me ask them this question:
How corrupt can a government be when out of the so-called b/millions of dollars bestowed upon our beggar nation by the international donor countries for the past eleven years only about $1.5 million has not been thoroughly accounted for,and leaving almost Le 1 trillion (i.e. almost one trillion leones) in the kitty for disbursement by the akartas? Compare that to the Shaki and Momoh eras!
Who be the tiff? Nar dem akarta be the tiff, for sure.
Let us hope Ernestino will change all of that. Has he declared his assets yet? How about the "new kids" surrounding him, have they declared their assets yet, as they said they would? Big fat chance!!!
This is what HE Pa Kabba said regarding the issue of CORRUPTION:
"...Mr. President, I was amazed to read in our press that my Government was soft on corruption and that our development partners may have withheld funding because of this. Let me state that my government maintained a very robust stand against corruption. Before I assumed office, corruption was a taboo subject in this country. It was so endemic that the word corruption was never used. I personally led this fight against corruption and in this process, I requested and obtained assistance from the British. A British consultant designed the Anti Corruption Commission strategy based on a model he had put in place with excellent results, in Hong Kong and Botswana..."
"...At the inception of our own Anti-Corruption Commission, we were able to prosecute and convict high profile officials among whom were an appeal court judge, ministers and other senior officials. The Anti Corruption Commission sensitised and continues to sensitise the Sierra Leone public about the evils of corruption through very effective radio and TV messages. I personally have referred to corruption in my address in Parliament as a national security threat. What I have refused to do is to play the counter-productive game of the politics of anti-corruption by which the fight against corruption is misused as a political weapon against one’s political opponents..."
Mind whom you ask for help, my peeps!!!
DFID's intervention defeated?
"...I may add here that certain strong positions taken by our international partners may have been counter productive in the fight against corruption. For example, DFID insisted that we change the prosecution process of corruption cases by removing the Attorney-General’s fiat to determine who should be prosecuted and relegating this function to a team of three prosecutors, two of whom are their appointees and the third, a nominee of the Attorney-General. This was contrary to the provisions of our constitution. They threatened to withdraw their financial assistance unless we agreed to their prescr1ption even though they were informed that the Attorney-General’s fiat was an entrenched clause in our constitution. Yielding to pressure, a high profile case was taken to the court presided over by two DFID recruited judges. The case was thrown out of court for the very reason that my government had given. Even then DFID has maintained its stand..."
"...Making the Auditor-General’s Report available to an international agency before it had gone through Parliamentary scrutiny as required by our laws was another area of difficulty. Even the President is not entitled to this document until after parliamentary scrutiny. Our government could not tolerate, even from a friendly country, the use of financial leverage to undermine our sovereignty..."
So! why did y'all allow the public NOT to know about these positions y'all took on behalf of democratic constitutionality, until now? MUMU gofment nor fine oh!!!
"...A further concern was the high-handed manner in which the Deputy Anti Corruption Commissioner, a DFID appointee, treated Sierra Leoneans suspected of corruption. One case was the dawn raid on the residence of a Minister, without a search warrant or an arrest warrant. The Minister was detained for a whole day in his pyjamas in the ACC office although no corruption evidence was produced..."
Enti we nar beggar state, ehn black!! Aye dunia, when will we be respected?
"...To site yet another disagreement was the treatment the Deputy Anti Corruption Commissioner meted against a Sierra Leonean, Ms. Newman-Smart, who had decided to return home from the United Kingdom where she practised law, to serve her country. Ms. Newman-Smart was employed by Government as Chief Immigration Officer. She was arrested, her premises searched, her personal papers put in the internet, thereby depriving her of her privacy. This harassment and shock may have led to the lady’s premature death, as she was a hypertensive case..."
Dem kill da gial day for nartin, mine.
"...My Government took the view that prosecution was not the only way to fight corruption. While successful prosecution could indeed be a strong deterrent against corruption, its impact on abolishing it can be minimal. We therefore set in motion certain legislative and administrative measures to remove opportunities for corruption which I would like to recommend to you, Mr. President, for your consideration:
1. Procurement leakages if not properly sealed, can lead to high rates of corruption. We therefore enacted legislation which removed procurement from Government Ministries to a Commission comprising people of high integrity and knowledge on procurement matters.
2. The National Policy Advisory Committee (NPAC) was set up to advise Cabinet on all Sector Policies and Cabinet papers, and make recommendations for Government action. The NPAC is composed of highly qualified and reliable Sierra Leoneans who scrutinise all Papers to ensure they are in the best interest of the state. The past Chairmen for the NPAC have been Dr. Peter L. Tucker, Prof. Eldred Jones, Dr. Dunstance Spencer and currently Prof. John Kamara.
3. Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) system is designed to ensure that goods and services reach their intended beneficiaries and are not siphoned away along the road. Hilary Benn, the erstwhile Secretary of State for DFID, commended my Government on this particular initiative while he was addressing an international meeting in the United Kingdom.
4. Budgeting process in most countries is not known to anyone except the Ministry of Finance officials. Other people only get the details on the day the Budget is read in Parliament. Today in Sierra Leone, the Budgetary Process is transparent and participatory as civil society, Paramount Chiefs and students are invited to take part in the budget process.
Mr. President, for anyone therefore to say that my Government was soft on corruption, is to distort the fact of our robust stand against this social and economic scourge..."
You! tell it to them "new (akarta) kids on the block", Bra TK. Teach them right from wrong early on in their quest to rule honestly.
Experience is the best teacher, so teach-on Bra TK. Hopefully they'd learn before they get themselves in trouble (CORRUPTION), as I am sure they are going to be involved into it.
Y'all must hold the people responsible for their own responsibilities. We are not a socialist state. The peoples must produce in order to be excellent citizens.
WORDS OF WISDOM to the young cat on the throne!!
Bra TK: "...Before I conclude, I want to mention a number of issues which in my opinion could preoccupy your mind as you conduct the affairs of state:
1. Let our people know that unless they can provide enough food for their own consumption and surplus for export, as we used to do before the advent of diamonds, we shall never be truly independent. I did my own bit under my food security programme and even if some people still claim to go to bed hungry, nobody can claim not to have been sensitized about the need to be self-sufficient in food production including the diversification of our diet.
2. Encourage our people to work hard for what they want and not to depend on others, the state, the government or even donors, to provide for all their needs. Sierra Leone should not be seen as a "Nanny" State or "Combra" State.
3. Keep a watchful eye over our mineral resources and ensure that they are exploited for the maximum benefit of the ordinary people. In this connection, we have already taken measures to develop a database of our mineral resources – what kind, where located, quantity and their quality. If this is completed the country will be in a stronger position to negotiate the best terms for their exploitation. Sierra Leone is now a member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) which should help us in instilling transparency in revenues derived from our minerals and the way such revenue is used.
4. Consolidate the thinking that as a nation, our output is dependent upon the skill competencies and training of our human resource. My government opened the way for many people to access quality education. Reviewing the 6334 system of education should not be misconstrued as dampening the gains we have so obviously made. You may wish to consider taking steps to expand this base, by continuing to create affordable institutions to allow Sierra Leoneans of various abilities and capabilities to feel proud of their attainment as they contribute to nation-building.
5. Guard against environmental degradation so that we do not lose all our forests and animals, especially rare and endangered species, which are indigenous to our country.
6. Indiscipline and lawlessness have been the bane of our society. Every effort should be made to curb this malaise. The criminal justice system and the police should do everything possible to bring culprits and lawbreakers to book. I am heartened by your commitment to this goal as stated in your swearing-in address and I have no doubt that you will succeed..."
Under the circumstances, you done good, Bra TK. No matter what the detractors may state.
So long, HE TK!!!
"...Mr. President, I now wish to thank all those who worked with me in my administration, for the successes we achieved while in office..."
No more war in na we Sa Lon due to politics unless the akartas provoke it. Be warned!!
"...With these remarks, I hereby hand over to you, Mr. President, the baton of office and once again wish you well and every success during your tenure of office. I now take my leave to enjoy a well-earned retirement..."
Long-live HE Pa Kabba, the two-term President of Sa Lon under the banner of the SLPP - democratically elected.
"...I thank you all for your attention..."
We too thank you, Sir, for the services you rendered to our motherland.
Jah Guide!!!
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: The Truth
To: All
Date Posted: 07:59:16 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: f298781.ga.unc.edu at 152.4.31.217
Message:
Kabba's speech could be all flowery but the fact is on the ground. The citizens on the ground who realized his facts voted during the election; his party was voted out.
Kabba is rather too late to paint this flowery picture of his regime. If it were true, his party would have won the election.
Indeed, he is only now painfully struggling to protect his legacy, but he is a little too late.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: OOPS
To: All
Date Posted: 23:43:44 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
IS THIS THE SAME OLE SAME OLE TRIBALIST TWIT THAT GOES BY THE NAME OF SENGBE OR EDMUND KOKER? AH WELL WE ALL KNEW THAT SOONER OR LATER YOU WOULD BE GETTING OUT OF YOUR RAT HOLE
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Aminata Dumbuya
To: All
Date Posted: 21:39:11 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
Dear Mr Sengbe,
Allow me to congratulate you for presenting the truest picture of the beauty of Sierra Leone that has been sorely missing from this forum. After you had finished adding all that sugar and honey to Kabba's self-serving speech, I almost booked a flight right back to Sierra Leone to drink from all those nectaries bursting allover the beautiful country.
Sengbe, you are so right! All those people who complain about corruption, hunger, mismanagement of the economy, rampant corruption and the SLPP govt's sabotage of its own Anti Corruption Commission? They are just lying donkeys and APC propagandists who are too ungrateful to appreciate the wonderful job Kabba and his heavenly SLPP crew did.
Pa Sengbe, I will personally like to endorse the beautiful depiction of SLPP-ruled Sierra Leone that you so nicely painted. Yes, Mr Sengbe, you are so right about the grandiose superhighways snaking through the length and breadth of the country, the breathtaking skyscrapers shooting for the sky, the total lack of poverty and ghettoes and the sunshiny nights with the endless supply of electricity. How can we ever repay SLPP for all these goodies? Corruption...What corruption?
Pa Sengbeh, I thank you and your SLPP comrades for making life sweet, wonderful, belful and stress-free during the last decade.
Appreciatively,
Aminata.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Sengbe
To: All
Date Posted: 22:48:52 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: nc-71-1-209-107.dyn.embarqhsd.net at 71.1.209.107
Message:
Young lady/titi, your sarcasm is well noted, and not as hilarious as you might think. The truth of the matter is that had Bra TK and Co. articulated their achievements in governance to the extent they were supposed to in the general populace, your sarcastic remarks would have been redundant, simply because Pa Kabba is more believable to me than someone like you who depends solely on secondhand information.
I did not try to paint a rosy picture in that nation. I embarked on the end-of-term report submitted by the outgoing President to the incoming one. The new guy had led the opposition while ex-President led the nation, so he knows quite well that President Kabba was reporting the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. You have the freedom to call it a self-serving report, if you'd like, but the truth is the truth, and it cannot be denied however much you might be disgusted by it. Ernest has not denied it, and for now that is all that matters.
Roads were mentioned in that article, not "gradiose superhighways snaking through the length and breadth of the country". Some of these roads are being built, and the construction of such infrastructure is not neccessarily going to be completed overnight during the inauguration. It will take some time to realize the developmental strides undertaken, and achieved by the SLPP governments of HE Pa Kabba. Let us see the instant gratification the apc government is going to shower your lot with in Sa Lon in the very near future. We are quite patient, we shall give them until end of their first term, and that is all the time they will be allotted with.
"Skyscrapers", "total lack of poverty", and "ghettoes", were not mentioned either in that article of mine. I merely accentuated the positive strides made by the SLPP-led GoSL under the leadership of Pa Kabba in governing a totally failed state at the initial stages of democratic governance in 1996. It is possible that your imagination is quite acute in this dreamland of yours.
In the abundance of food compared to the era of hunger (tow line for ress) in those days when your folks (apc) misruled that nation, whose fault is it that people would go to bed hungry nowadays, if not their own? Is it the fault of the government? A government that provided the enabling environment for folks to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Did some of them do so? Is Sa Lon a socialist state? Will it be so under the apc?
Corruption under the SLPP was curtailed more so under Kabba's SLPP, than under the APC of Shaki, and Momoh. And that is a fact. I pray that Ernestino and Co. will keep to their promise (zero tolerance for corruption), but I doubt it very much, since they ascended to the throne through corrupt practices.
The lion is accusing the cat of eating too much meat. What a bloody shame!!
You can take that flight back home any time you wish. The erstwhile SLPP-led GoSL has guaranteed your freedom and democratic rights to feel free to make your "life sweet, belful, and stress-free". You owe my beloved SLPP for that fact.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Hassan Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 08:59:45 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: kamson10@hotmail.com
Entered From: dsl092-165-252.wdc2.dsl.speakeasy.net at 66.92.165.252
Message:
Sengbe,
Articulate corruption, poverty, no electricity, low level of education, hunger, etc.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 03:30:41 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
Sengbe: I will be responding to your praise of kabba's belated smoke screen defence of his failure when I finish work this evening.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: ok so
To: All
Date Posted: 20:19:12 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: thinkfast@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
even if they where lies thats what we call politics. SLPP did not fight back hard enough. you fight propaganda with propaganda. i guess they were busy stealing money instead of lookign at the realities
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Mirror
To: All
Date Posted: 18:47:09 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
sorry to disappoint you as you congratulate yourselves in the way only the most corrupt government in the history of salone can -- with dripping fraud!
YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ALL THE NOISE YOU WROTE ABOUT BY ASKINGT THE PEOPLE OF SALONE ONE QUESTION: Did they have electricity, tap water and clean streets in Freetown regularly during the 11 years of SLPP incompetence and corruption? The answer is a big fat NO! Not at all in 11 years of SLPP corruption and incompetence.
And like a dumb dodo, you echo the rubbish talk about sLPP MuMU not telling the people before the eledction what they had done! Why would the people need to be told what the SLPP inconmptents and corryupts had done when they could see for themselvesd -- no light, no water, no clean capital city!
Hey, dumbo, YOu may be blind (after all you are SLPP). But the people, they are not blind. That is why they kicked out the most corrupt and incompetent govt. they had ever had inflcited upon them. You can comntinue living in nyour make-believe MUMU-make-we-loss election nonsense.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Fatu
To: All
Date Posted: 19:15:43 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Mr. Sengbe, I hope you do not hate me when I say that you are a dumbeh for real. Don't you have any shame to come here to write all this crap about SLPP achieving this or achieving that when they achieved nothing ? SLPP ruled us for 11 years.We have no electricity. Ernest Koroma will achieve in few months what you failed to achieve in 11 years . In only 3 months, Ernest Koroma will give us electricity. Doesn't that make you SLPP buggers hang your head in shame ? Look at the road condition in our country.Look at the dilapedated state of our schools, universities and hospitals ?
You have debunked nothing .You have only exposed your shamelessness. My brother, try to get some shame.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: ITK
To: All
Date Posted: 10:23:09 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 38.98.119.16
Message:
Fatu; Nico, Aminata, et al.
Your postings confirm for me why Sierra Leone will forever be mired in poverty and underdevelopment. I am not certain, but I suspect most of you are "overseas". Instead of trying to profit from our collective exposure to the models of "constructive nationalism" exhibited in the West, why doe we constantly tear ourselves apart in the most hostile and indecent manner?
For heavens sake, Sierra Leone is not the only country in the world with a multiplicity of political parties or communities. Because of these competing identities, I don't expect us to agree on all matters-- in fact, most matters. And, I understand the need every so often to vent or "blow mind" as we would say. However, when, without any compunction whatsoever, we can call each other "SLPP buggers", "dumbehs", "dumb dodos", etc. -- and mean it-- simply because of a divergence of viewpoints, we only confirm that we have yet to produce a compelling national identity. Without that, I don't see how Sierra Leone can realistically hope to escape the perennial label of one of the world's poorest nations.
More to the point of Sengbe's posting-- I have yet to see why it would elicit such venom (and I have read it three times). One thought comes to mind, and it is so deceptively simple: the truth hurts. The fact is, there is nothing untruthful about what Sengbe has laid out, disagree with it or not. If I were to narrate this whole episode to my 9 year old nephew, he would simply say, in his characteristic American lingo, "they're just haters". I would hope that's not the case. That does not promote national unity, solidarity and strength-- all of the elements we need in place to even begin the process of moving our nation forward.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: ANSWER
To: All
Date Posted: 11:41:17 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
YOU ASK: "More to the point of Sengbe's posting. I have yet to see why it elicited such venom."
ANSWER: You don't see why because you are a SLPPer -- blind by choice to ther SLPP's record-setting record of corruption, mismanagement and treason which has victimized millions of Sierra leoneans for the past eleven years -- no light, no water, no sanitation and no jobs, all of which reduced the people of Sa Lon to the paupers nof the world. All the time, you SLPP kleptomaniac betrayed the people's trust as you looted and plundered and pillaged foreign donors'monjies intended for the victims of your criminality -- the people of Sa Lon.
Sengbe's shameless posting was despicable because he omitted to recite the true SLPP record of corruption, mismanagement, tribalism, cannibalism and last-minute desperate election rigging. He is lucky thet Coforioko is a charitable forum otherwise he would have received more than just vebal venhom.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: ITK
To: All
Date Posted: 12:43:15 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 38.98.119.16
Message:
ANSWER:
Sadly, you've proved my point. Your short posting encapsulates the hate and dishonesty I alluded to.
Funny how your ANSWER would be an apt descr1ption of the APC party's historical record (substituting, of course, 24 years for 11 years). But, you know, useless comparisons such as whose record in office (between the SLPP or APC) is worse really don't interest me. For, as long as we have amongst us those who have been conditioned to be "haters" and to refuse to acknowledge anything positive about their opponents in the political arena, there will always be internal strife. This in turns will forever weaken the ability of any government, no matter the best intentions, to address Sierra Leone's many problems.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 15:38:47 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
ITK: First quote anywhere in the forum where I used the word you alluded to me. You are not thinking straight and you are commiting the same mistake which cost the SLPP election.
Stop calling people haters when you disagree with their views or statement and you don't know them.
The statement by Tejan Kabba was all excuses and whitewash. DFID had conducted an audit. They found that there were discrepances between the money they had donated to the Kabba's govt and what was actually done with it.
They demanded the govt gave an account and made future donations conditional of what happened to the previous monies. Kabba protected his sacred cows from exposure by using the concept of non interference in souvereign affairs to block further investigation by DFID officials.
If all these information which we now have before us were true why did Kabba not explain this to the public at the time when his govt was on the rack during the election campaign.
That Kabba waited until the inuaguration to tell us, is nothing more than trying to protect himself.
To me kabba is still in denial of tolerating corruption and the damage he caused to the SLPP.
The only way forward, to rest this accusation and denial is for EBK to entrenched the anti corruption powers to investigate allegations of stealing and prosecute where there is evidence.
Kabba is no longer there to obstruct justice.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: ITK
To: All
Date Posted: 16:38:36 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 38.98.119.16
Message:
nico:
I am not sure what name you are referring to. If you mean "hater", that term refers to anyone to refuses to acknowledge the positive in others (in Sierra Leone, badhart might be similar)-- it is used freely in the American slang to express that point. I would not call it offensive; most people in fact use it in a jocular manner; but it sure gets a reaction from some people-- as you know, the truth hurts. My use of the term was not directed to anyone. I stated that there are haters on this forum. So who the cap fits..
Anyway, just to set the record straight, I am not disagreeing with anyone's viewpoint here. I will give you my reaction when it is warranted. However, I detest dishonesty, and I will call anyone out on that anywhere. Likewise, I cherish the truth and will promote it when necessary as well. Just yesterday, I pointed out that I am a lifelong SLPP supporter but made it unequivocally clear that I believed the SLPP press release and boycott was a mistake. Likewise, during the SLPP tenure, I spoke out where the SLPP made policy mistakes or erred otherwise.
You must be in a different form from me if you are suggesting the SLPP supporters/sympathisers are the ones calling names. This is clearly a pro-APC forum, and I find it healthy that SLPP supporters are willing to participate and express their views despite the incredible hostility and daily diatribe against the SLPP.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Sengbe
To: All
Date Posted: 10:43:24 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 198.85.63.254
Message:
You identified the malady in the "Saro" psyche quite accurately Bra ITK. Hopefully your prescr1ption will cure this malady, but I doubt it.
The desire to be truthful and honest at all times is quite lacking in most "Saro" people in their opposition to us. Most of these folks will only accept the truth if it serves their constituency, and not the national interest, in the hope of corruptively benefitting from it.
As SLPPers, the truth we propound is absolute and maximally objective. The lumpens can lump their dislike at Bormeh if they wish. I am not about to respond to these "haters". They can fry in their hatred for all I care. I will remain to be truthful at all times.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Zaddik Isaac
To: All
Date Posted: 18:24:05 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-298472d5.01-32-73746f42.cust.bredbandsbolaget.se at 213.114.132.41
Message:
great stuff Sengbe
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Musa Kenema
To: All
Date Posted: 23:32:50 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
He even believes you and that you mean well by your comment. Why dont you tell the idiot that yours was a tongue in cheek reaction to the intellectual fraud that he is.
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Sengbe
To: All
Date Posted: 22:55:46 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: nc-71-1-209-107.dyn.embarqhsd.net at 71.1.209.107
Message:
Thanks, Zaddik Isaac.
My responses will be selectively targeted to civilized folks who can read, comprehend, and write effectively. Not to the lumpen on this forum.
How have you been, my friend?
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: All's Well That Ends Well
To: All
Date Posted: 14:17:18 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 65.91.143.4
Message:
Sengbe,my warrior friend and brother: I'll address you in the most superlative of terms not so much because you are well endowed but it is the ease with which you put down spears and spikes aimed at hurting you with 'arctic' calmness of spirit and the ability to throw down even the masquerading devils, you make me believe absolutely, positively that you are a real descendant of Sengbe Pieh of old.
Gallons of home-made honey have been sent to you by express that will be delivered with the speed of light!!!!!!!!
Subject: Re: Debunking malicious political lies on Inauguration Day
From: Sengbe
To: All
Date Posted: 14:40:21 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 198.85.63.254
Message:
Thank you, my dear brother (or sister).
Espousing the truth in the face of adversity is a characteristic that members from warrior clans are endowed with. And if you believe in that truth, my father once told me, you shall overcome, always. The enemy will always be conquered under any circumstances; no matter the gravity, or brevity, of the fight/struggle.
So, in the spirit of your intuition, I remain Sengbe Konouwah, the Conqueror of Idiots on this forum and elsewhere.
May the peace provided by the Spirits of our ancestors always guide you in your undertakings.
Subject: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 17:55:35 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host81-154-149-245.range81-154.btcentralplus.com at 81.154.149.245
Message:
Handing Over Statement of Former President Kabbah of Sierra Leone on Inauguration Day
By Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
Mr. President,
This is a unique and momentous occasion in the history of our country, as it is the first time that a constitutionally elected government is handing over authority to a constitutionally elected successor. I would like at the outset to congratulate you on behalf of my outgoing government and on my own personal behalf on your election to the highest office of the land and wish you every success in your tenure of office as President of the Republic of Sierra Leone.
My statement today should be regarded as a form of handing-over report. I have taken note with full agreement of your desire that out-going ministers of my Government present to yours proper handing-over reports. I am pleased to learn that the process went through satisfactorily. Consequently, my suggestions and recommendations should be properly interpreted as arising out of my experience as President of our country.
Today, you are inheriting a state that is on the threshold of taking off for the progress and prosperity that lie ahead for our people. Since the war came to an end, the security of the state has been maintained through the restructuring of the security sector with the assistance of the United Kingdom government and improvements in the conditions of service for the security forces. Local government authority has been restored, a more effective justice system is being gradually built; a more proactive stance and increased vigilance from responsible civil society groups and the satisfactorily informed general public is increasingly contributing to the building of a more transparent and accountable society. Many projects have been put in place to create jobs particularly for unemployed youths.
I understand that you have visited the Bumbuna hydro electric project and have seen the state of progress for yourself. In the meantime, measures to further improve the electricity situation in the capital city are currently in progress with the help of the Moroccan technical team. Schools have been rebuilt, hospitals refurbished and new ones under construction. New diagnostic equipment is being installed that will now significantly reduce the need for people to travel abroad for medical attention.
With regard to roads, as soon as the war ended, my government assiduously embarked upon the task of repairing and restoring the road network with the help of the Kuwaiti Fund, BADEA, World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank and the European Union.
The following roads have either been constructed or are under construction: the Koribondo-Blama-Gendema Ferry Road in the South; Makeni-Kamakwie road in the North; Kurobola-Kabala axis and the Masiaka-Makeni road also in the North. Work is in progress on several other roads such as the Masiaka-Bo road mainly in the South and the Tokeh-Lumley road in the Western Area, thereby completing the Waterloo-Freetown/Peninsular road.
Funding has been secured for several planned road projects such as the Bo-Kenema road; Kenema-Koindu road; Makeni-Matotoka road; Matotoka-Koidu road; the Rogbere Junction-Pamelap road; the Songo-Moyamba road and the Moyamba-Moyamba Junction road. With regards to the Hillside Bye-Pass Road that will run behind Pademba Road Prison and exit behind Kissy Road Cemetery, delay in starting this project has been too long with protracted negotiations with property owners.
We also have funding for the construction of 1,150 kilometer of feeder roads throughout the provinces, as an integral part of our food security programme.
Further, I strongly recommend to you Mr. President, to pay particular attention to the Kenema-Koindu road, for which funding is secured from four Arab countries and OPEC, and tender documents are under preparation. The Kenema-Koindu road deserves special mention. Apart from its strategic and security importance, the Koindu market came into existence in 1932, the year in which I was born, that is over 75 years ago. It was an initiative of the people who lived in the area bordering Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. It developed into a full scale international market attracting traders from as far as the Ivory Coast. It would not be an exaggeration to state that it was the precursor of our Mano River Union today which only came into existence in 1975.
Two years ago Parliamentarians, elders and prominent citizens on either side of the Moa/Makona River, formed the Makona River Union. Its second general assembly in Koindu was graced by the heads of State of the three countries. At that summit a resolution was presented by the Assembly to further consolidate the Union. In addition to the international market in Koindu, a Technical/Vocational Institute and a General Referral hospital in Foya Kama in Liberia and in Nongowa in Guinea respectively were recommended.
The National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) has already allocated seed money for the construction of a modern international market in Koindu. Your Excellency may wish to pursue this matter further with your colleagues especially after your recent interaction with them.
Let me also add that feasibility studies for the Freetown-Lungi link road, the Lungi-Port Loko road and the Bandajuma-Mano River Bridge road have been completed and it is now urgent to secure funding for their construction. Perhaps, you may want to consider the involvement of the private sector for the early construction of the Freetown-Lungi link road in the context of a toll-system arrangement.
Mr. President, all of this is a far cry from what we inherited when we came into office in 1996. We took over from a military regime at a time when a brutal war was still raging, to be followed by a coup by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which eventually brought the economy to shambles, the country bankrupt and basic infrastructure completely destroyed.
My Government inherited a public debt of $ US1.6 billion. With stringent financial practice, today, we enjoy total debt relief and over Le.500 billion at the Central Bank for use by your Government.
Therefore, the role and responsibilities of a president in a country that is just emerging from conflict are enormous and particularly challenging. Throughout my presidency, I was guided by four main principles:
1) seek the interest of the state;
2) secure the welfare of the people;
3) create opportunities to enable the people to realize their potential; and
4) build national cohesion.
You may wish to consider these principles in formulating your programme for moving our country forward.
In a diverse society such as ours, with many ethnic and other groups, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, the greatest challenge is how to bring about national cohesion so that everyone in his or her own little way can contribute to the development of the state.
During my tenure of office, I endeavoured to make my government as inclusive as possible so that every section could have a stake in the security of the state. At one time, for the sake of peace, I even included former rebels who had been waging war on the state and killing our people.
We are emerging from a bitterly contested election that threatened the very essence of our state with confrontations, intimidations and harassment among party supporters. One of your biggest challenges will be how to reconcile all of these opposing groups and heal whatever frictions and misunderstandings that may have been created by the electoral process. On that score, I hereby openly declare my willingness to offer you any assistance you might need because the peace and cohesion of this country have always been among my principal objectives.
The security forces were highly acclaimed for their impartiality and professionalism during the elections, but there have been recent allegations, particularly with reference to the police about not being evenhanded. All efforts must be made to remove such doubts. These notwithstanding, I am still proud of our police as they have many good and committed officers. We enjoin the military to continue as a well-organized, disciplined and professional entity. I have no doubt that they have the capacity to safeguard the integrity of the state and to protect the life and property of its citizens.
Mr. President,
I was amazed to read in our press that my Government was soft on corruption and that our development partners may have withheld funding because of this. Let me state that my government maintained a very robust stand against corruption. Before I assumed office, corruption was a taboo subject in this country. It was so endemic that the word corruption was never used. I personally led this fight against corruption and in this process, I requested and obtained assistance from the British. A British consultant designed the Anti Corruption Commission strategy based on a model he had put in place with excellent results, in Hong Kong and Botswana.
At the inception of our own Anti Corruption Commission, we were able to prosecute and convict high profile officials among whom were an appeal court judge, ministers and other senior officials. The Anti Corruption Commission sensitised and continues to sensitise the Sierra Leone public about the evils of corruption through very effective radio and TV messages. I personally have referred to corruption in my address in Parliament as a national security threat. What I have refused to do is to play the counter-productive game of the politics of anti-corruption by which the fight against corruption is misused as a political weapon against one’s political opponents.
I may add here that certain strong positions taken by our international partners may have been counter productive in the fight against corruption. For example, DFID insisted that we change the prosecution process of corruption cases by removing the Attorney-General’s fiat to determine who should be prosecuted and relegating this function to a team of three prosecutors, two of whom are their appointees and the third, a nominee of the Attorney-General. This was contrary to the provisions of our constitution. They threatened to withdraw their financial assistance unless we agreed to their prescr1ption even though they were informed that the Attorney-General’s fiat was an entrenched clause in our constitution. Yielding to pressure, a high profile case was taken to the court presided over by two DFID recruited judges. The case was thrown out of court for the very reason that my government had given. Even then DFID has maintained its stand.
Making the Auditor-General’s Report available to an international agency before it had gone through Parliamentary scrutiny as required by our laws was another area of difficulty. Even the President is not entitled to this document until after parliamentary scrutiny. Our government could not tolerate, even from a friendly country, the use of financial leverage to undermine our sovereignty.
A further concern was the high-handed manner in which the Deputy Anti Corruption Commissioner, a DFID appointee, treated Sierra Leoneans suspected of corruption. One case was the dawn raid on the residence of a Minister, without a search warrant or an arrest warrant. The Minister was detained for a whole day in his pyjamas in the ACC office although no corruption evidence was produced.
To site yet another disagreement was the treatment the Deputy Anti Corruption Commissioner meted against a Sierra Leonean, Ms. Newman-Smart, who had decided to return home from the United Kingdom where she practised law, to serve her country. Ms. Newman-Smart was employed by Government as Chief Immigration Officer. She was arrested, her premises searched, her personal papers put in the internet, thereby depriving her of her privacy. This harassment and shock may have led to the lady’s premature death, as she was a hypertensive case.
My Government took the view that prosecution was not the only way to fight corruption. While successful prosecution could indeed be a strong deterrent against corruption, its impact on abolishing it can be minimal. We therefore set in motion certain legislative and administrative measures to remove opportunities for corruption which I would like to recommend to you, Mr. President, for your consideration:
1. Procurement leakages if not properly sealed, can lead to high rates of corruption. We therefore enacted legislation which removed procurement from Government Ministries to a Commission comprising people of high integrity and knowledge on procurement matters.
2. The National Policy Advisory Committee (NPAC) was set up to advise Cabinet on all Sector Policies and Cabinet papers, and make recommendations for Government action. The NPAC is composed of highly qualified and reliable Sierra Leoneans who scrutinise all Papers to ensure they are in the best interest of the state. The past Chairmen for the NPAC have been Dr. Peter L. Tucker, Prof. Eldred Jones, Dr. Dunstance Spencer and currently Prof. John Kamara.
3. Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) system is designed to ensure that goods and services reach their intended beneficiaries and are not siphoned away along the road. Hilary Benn, the erstwhile Secretary of State for DFID, commended my Government on this particular initiative while he was addressing an international meeting in the United Kingdom.
4. Budgeting process in most countries is not known to anyone except the Ministry of Finance officials. Other people only get the details on the day the Budget is read in Parliament. Today in Sierra Leone, the Budgetary Process is transparent and participatory as civil society, Paramount Chiefs and students are invited to take part in the budget process.
Mr. President, for anyone therefore to say that my Government was soft on corruption, is to distort the fact of our robust stand against this social and economic scourge.
Before I conclude, I want to mention a number of issues which in my opinion could preoccupy your mind as you conduct the affairs of state:
1. Let our people know that unless they can provide enough food for their own consumption and surplus for export, as we used to do before the advent of diamonds, we shall never be truly independent. I did my own bit under my food security programme and even if some people still claim to go to bed hungry, nobody can claim not to have been sensitized about the need to be self-sufficient in food production including the diversification of our diet.
2. Encourage our people to work hard for what they want and not to depend on others, the state, the government or even donors, to provide for all their needs. Sierra Leone should not be seen as a "Nanny" State or "Combra" State.
3. Keep a watchful eye over our mineral resources and ensure that they are exploited for the maximum benefit of the ordinary people. In this connection, we have already taken measures to develop a database of our mineral resources – what kind, where located, quantity and their quality. If this is completed the country will be in a stronger position to negotiate the best terms for their exploitation. Sierra Leone is now a member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) which should help us in instilling transparency in revenues derived from our minerals and the way such revenue is used.
4. Consolidate the thinking that as a nation, our output is dependent upon the skill competencies and training of our human resource. My government opened the way for many people to access quality education. Reviewing the 6334 system of education should not be misconstrued as dampening the gains we have so obviously made. You may wish to consider taking steps to expand this base, by continuing to create affordable institutions to allow Sierra Leoneans of various abilities and capabilities to feel proud of their attainment as they contribute to nation-building.
5. Guard against environmental degradation so that we do not lose all our forests and animals, especially rare and endangered species, which are indigenous to our country.
6. Indiscipline and lawlessness have been the bane of our society. Every effort should be made to curb this malaise. The criminal justice system and the police should do everything possible to bring culprits and lawbreakers to book. I am heartened by your commitment to this goal as stated in your swearing-in address and I have no doubt that you will succeed.
Mr. President, I now wish to thank all those who worked with me in my administration, for the successes we achieved while in office.
With these remarks, I hereby hand over to you, Mr. President, the baton of office and once again wish you well and every success during your tenure of office. I now take my leave to enjoy a well-earned retirement.
I thank you all for your attention.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Saidu Daphay Turay
To: All
Date Posted: 09:02:43 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 160.253.30.53
Message:
"I now take my leave to enjoy a well-earned retirement"
President Kabbah's rhetorical speech is amusing. What is most fascinating is the last sentence, "I now take my leave to enjoy a well-earned retirement" Having retired from the UN years ago and entering into Sierra Leone's politics that gave the masses hopes of a redeemer, on the contrary he left a poverty stricken country and a destroyed party (SLPP). Now he is taking a leave to enjoy a well earned-disgraceful retirement.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: ITK
To: All
Date Posted: 10:30:43 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 38.98.119.16
Message:
Intersting take, Saidu: Care to elaborate on your contention that the SLPP is a destroyed party. A definition of "destroyed" in this context would be helpful. Are you suggesting that one electoral loss renders a party destroyed? Would you consider the APC destroyed because it lost successive elections to the SLPP-- one in a major landslide?
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Mirror
To: All
Date Posted: 11:46:24 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
ITK, you SLPPers are really dishonest! You want saidu to give you a definition of destroy, as in Kabbah's SLPP's destruction of Sierra leone? Well, in case you are blind, how about this notorious definition of SLPP destruction of Salone: Elen years of no light, no water, no food, no jobs, no hope in the SLPP's dirtiest capital city of the world?
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: ITK
To: All
Date Posted: 12:51:26 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 38.98.119.16
Message:
Mirror:
How apt an name. Take a look in the mirror and I mean when you are at you most sober. If you sincerely believe that the Kabbah administration inherited a nation in 1996 that lacked for nothing and reduced it to a nation that had "no hope", when it handed power to the Koroma government yesterday, then you and I have nothing to debate.
If, however, you want an honest debate, let me know and I will will educate you about governance in Sierra Leone during the period 1968 through 2007.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Mirror
To: All
Date Posted: 14:45:43 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-21-126-109.res.east.verizon.net at 70.21.126.109
Message:
ITK, Kabbah inherited in 1996 a nationa that had electriciy, running water, and a clean capital city. After 11 years of Kabbah's SLPP's internationally notorious corruption and incompetence, Kabbah and his SLPP kleptomaniacs had destroyed the sound nation hthey had inherited -- no light, no water, no food, no jobs, no hope and a garbage-overflowing capital city.
To you that's not SLPP destruction. But to people who are not bling SLPP apologists, that's as destructive as any government has ever been in the history of Salone. That is why the not-blind people of Salone kicked out the entire corrupt SLPP cabal and replaced it with the new APC.
Cuss and presume facts not in evidence as much as your baleful fancy can allow, but as we lawyers say, facts are a stubborn animal -- they never change from one wishful thinker to another. I hope that lesson is not lost on you.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: ITK
To: All
Date Posted: 16:08:15 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 38.98.119.16
Message:
Mirror:
As a lawyer, I am sure you appreciate why an appellate court reviewing a lower court's decision gives due regard to any credibility determination by such court. As you know, an appellate court will not reverse absent clear error or outright implausibility. So, if you believe what you have just said is not only plausible but unimpeachable, who am my to seek to change your viewpoint (despite my earlier offer). Unfortunately, I just don't have the patience of an appellate judge to sift through the chaff for any wheat. I now realize that not only would it be a waste of time, it would also encourage further baseless asccusations masquerading as well-grounded or supportable assertions.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Fen Plaba!
To: All
Date Posted: 21:48:16 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-247-147-232.nycmny.east.verizon.net at 71.247.147.232
Message:
If only Kabba had governed as beautifully as he wrote, Salone would be well off and Berewa would be president. There is a disconsonance between the glorious words that Kabba would like to see on his glorious statue on Tejan Kabba Street and the harsh condemnation historians will spit at his grave in the political Rokupa.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Erica Adams
To: All
Date Posted: 19:02:35 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: ericamonique82@hotmail.com
Entered From: adsl-074-185-005-235.sip.clt.bellsouth.net at 74.185.5.235
Message:
This reads like someone who is concerned about his legacy after the fact. With all of these accomplishments, it's hard to understand why they weren't highlighted during the campaining. Unless they were not as glorious as they were outlined in this speech. One part at the end I thought was kind of abusive. The part where he makes reference to "even if some people still claim to go to bed hungry, nobody can claim not to have been sensitized about the need to be self-sufficient in food production including the diversification of our diet." Maybe he's not familiar with the learned helplessness theory or change theory model, but knowledge alone is not sufficient.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Zaddik Isaac
To: All
Date Posted: 18:39:52 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-298472d5.01-32-73746f42.cust.bredbandsbolaget.se at 213.114.132.41
Message:
Mr. Kabbah is a great man.
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: Jetly Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 09:59:17 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-69-143-53-43.hsd1.va.comcast.net at 69.143.53.43
Message:
Kabba seem to be either shameless or naive about the status of our beloved nation. If indeed, what he stated was true, then Sierra Leone would have been in prosperity. We all know the facts about our ravaged country. Kabba! you can't run away from your frivolous legacy.
Shame on you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Subject: Re: KABBAH'S HANDING OVER SPEECH - WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?
From: nico
To: All
Date Posted: 03:46:15 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: nicoleconsult@hotmail.com
Entered From: 82-35-143-136.cable.ubr03.enfi.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.35.143.136
Message:
For you only, not for sierra leoneans.
The guy is covering and making excuses about his failure. He is still in denial of corruption. Koroma should not listen to that trash, he should do it his own way. He was trying to prevent DFID exposing his protected corrupt officials by talking about sovereignty. But did he used the same argument during the war? Kabba even ccancelled the executive out come on the advised of UK and IMF.
Subject: S Leone 'riddled with corruption'
From: Ron
To: All
Date Posted: 17:07:30 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-240-237-236.fred.east.verizon.net at 71.240.237.236
Message:
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/7092861.stm
S Leone 'riddled with corruption'
By Mark Doyle
BBC News, Freetown
Widespread corruption and mismanagement are revealed in a confidential presidential audit in Sierra Leone exclusively obtained by the BBC.
Newly-elected President Ernest Bai Koroma commissioned the report.
It catalogues grave inadequacies in key areas such as health care, tax collection and the security services.
And it provides a unique and searingly frank insight into the sometimes opaque business of running a poor African nation through years of war and chaos.
One arm of government, for example, is alleged to have lent more than $1m (Ł480,000) to an unspecified recipient in the few months before the recent handover of power.
"We would advise," the report says coldly, "an investigation into the reasons for the loan".
'Miserable state'
At one ministry, the report seen by the BBC says, a project worth almost $500,000 was apparently financed by an international donor - but the money never reached the intended recipients.
I'm not saying that nobody should increase their assets but when it goes beyond magical proportions then an explanation should be given
President Ernest Bai Koroma
The Sierra Leonean Ministry of Agriculture is described as having "almost zero productivity" at the lower levels of employment.
Financial accounts are reported to have gone missing from many ministries and the culture of record-keeping is generally said to be "in a miserable state".
These findings might not be surprising to anyone who lives in Sierra Leone or any number of poor nations that have been through such chaotic times.
But what is unusual about this report is to have the problems set out so clearly - and in a way that may ultimately put the credibility of the presidency at stake.
In the 10 years I have been visiting this beautiful, friendly, but exasperating country, I have lost count of the number of times decent and honest Sierra Leoneans have told me corruption was their greatest problem.
Huge challenges
The confidential presidential report obtained by the BBC acknowledges corruption as "the greatest impediment to the country's development".
Newly-elected President Koroma has said dealing with corruption is his mantra; Sierra Leoneans may now take him, and judge him, at his word.
Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, is very slowly recovering from a decade of brutal war that ended in 2001.
But it still faces huge challenges.
The war started in 1991 when rebels crossed from Liberia and took Sierra Leone's diamond fields.
The rebels initially benefited from widespread dissatisfaction with corrupt government in Freetown - which they successfully used as a rallying call to unemployed, frustrated youth.
More questions
After years of widespread atrocities, the rebels were eventually defeated by a United Nations peacekeeping force and a separate intervention by the British army.
This year the country held elections that were seen as fair and were won by the opposition.
There has been a peaceful handover of power to President Koroma.
The transition was, by Sierra Leonean standards, a model of tolerance and fair play.
But President Koroma has inherited a bankrupt nation which is riddled with corruption.
This report shows what a mountain he has to climb.
It is common for African politicians to accuse governments of corruption when they are in opposition.
But they often fall into the same habits when they take power.
President Koroma's toughest test will be to show Sierra Leoneans not only that he is different, but that he can change the decades-old habits of almost everyone in government.
The confidential audit obtained by the BBC must make sobering reading for President Koroma. It is a picture of an economy in crisis.
But the report also raises more questions than it answers.
These questions include:
Will those responsible for past corruption be prosecuted?
Will any prosecutions be seen as a "witch hunt" - and potentially backfire?
What safeguards could stop future corruption?
What was the role of donors, especially the largest donor, Britain, while corruption flourished?
How will the new government address the twin problems of an impoverished countryside and a corrupt capital city - which was one of the original causes of the war?
A frank report on corruption is one thing, Sierra Leoneans may say; solving the problems it highlights is another.
Subject: SYLVIA comes up trump!
From: Neneh
To: All
Date Posted: 16:23:05 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 86.162.241.253
Message:
Wow!!
first to publish detailed pictures of the Inauguration
first to interview the first lady, Sia Koroma
first to interview ex-president, Kabbah
first to interview former vice president, Berewa
You have to give it to Awareness times..This lady wins the war of words hands down! and it was a clean fight too...
Subject: Re: SYLVIA comes up trump!
From: FORUM POLICE
To: All
Date Posted: 18:31:08 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
SYLVIA, Please stop this childishness on the forum. It does not matter who published first. Others like COCORIOKO have always been first.This one time should not get you dizzy.Grow up , lady.
Subject: Re: SYLVIA comes up trump!
From: Otoole
To: All
Date Posted: 18:04:15 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: otoolekargbo@yahoo.com
Entered From: cpe-65-31-4-93.insight.res.rr.com at 65.31.4.93
Message:
Neneh,do have to come all the way around here to give it to Awareness times, why dont you just go stright to awareness times. By the way, ladies dont fight wars.
Subject: Re: SYLVIA comes up trump!
From: FORUM POLICE
To: All
Date Posted: 18:35:04 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Almost all the posts are coming from an internet cafe with the same prefix in the IP.
Subject: 2 - b- 1 - 2 - b
From: Peter
To: All
Date Posted: 16:07:49 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-72-88-141-195.nwrknj.east.verizon.net at 72.88.141.195
Message:
In all Fairness, I can still get into this forum using the same computer and IP address.I do not know why I was banned and branded a SLPP supporter, because I concured with the posting or brought to the awareness of what Awarness Times had done, where was the advertising as stated by forum Police.
I will not paticipate in this formun again, as I have realised the real mettle or calibre of it owner, publishers and police.
God have mercey upon us all.
RECAP:For posting that Awareness Times beat Cocorioko to the punch, you are called all the names and banned from the only Sierra Leone forum in the world.
Subject: Youtube link about African American Children
From: Bugsyb
To: All
Date Posted: 15:43:38 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: aburneynic@yahoo.co.uk
Entered From: acbcea60.ipt.aol.com at 172.188.234.96
Message:
Could someone give me the link on youtube where a lady was talking about taking back our kids.
Subject: Re: Youtube link about African American Children
From: M. Alieu Iscandari Esq.
To: All
Date Posted: 10:14:10 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=Tq2kJ56hSqo
ENJOY
Subject: Condolence Link
From: Moderator
To: All
Date Posted: 15:27:08 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ppp-70-248-54-220.dsl.rcsntx.swbell.net at 70.248.54.220
Message:
Cocorioko Forum is introducing a condolence link where bereaved members of our communities can pay tributes to beloved lost ones. You need not have a google account to post. Try it. Cheers!
/Moderator
Subject: Cocorioko VS The New People
From: POLITICAL
To: All
Date Posted: 15:26:40 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: smtpgateway.azdes.gov at 207.108.136.242
Message:
In a programmatic point of view, cocorioko is getting better than before even though there is more to be done.
The The New People(TNP) is also have some credibility in designing perspective, but still needs to rearrange there templates, fonts and alignments.
These two sites have huge difference in a journalistic view point. The TNP is typically a mouthpiece for the defunct SLPP. I intentionally called it defunct because the party do not even have a formidable leader, so it is not working as a political party right now.
Due to political motive behind its creation the TNP lost credibility from day one it was created. They also borrowed stories and have no credible reporter in the country.
As for cocorioko, it was purely fair, but lately started slipping down a little, but still within the context of journalism.
Subject: Re: Cocorioko VS The New People
From: IT Specialist
To: All
Date Posted: 15:30:31 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-72-88-141-195.nwrknj.east.verizon.net at 72.88.141.195
Message:
Just a test
Subject: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 15:15:24 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
To me, the paper I expected people to have been praising these days is the PATRIOTIC VANGUARD. Gibril has really done a good job to move from obscurity to the apex, with his good format and daily updates.
I am one man who will praise even my enemy if I see need to praise it. When Awareness Times came out in Freetown, none of you here knew about it. I was the one who had my reporter scan the first page and I wrote a nice article announcing the birth of the paper.
Politics is a dirty game but we have to play it with integrity . But that is why we are where we are.We are too vindictive and once we have hated somebody we see nothing good in him/her anymore. Shame on us.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: J
To: All
Date Posted: 07:01:19 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-107-88.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.107.88
Message:
I trust that you will see something good in Sylvia Blyden particularly now that the First Lady has given her the best publicity by refusing to take interviews from onther rival journalist in favour of Sylvia Blyden. She must be credible otherwise Sia Koroma would not have given her such an opportunity.
I suggest you read the interview in the awarenesstimes.com
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: BEWARENESS TIMES
To: All
Date Posted: 07:14:09 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Are you sure Sia Koroma refused to give interviews to other newspapers ? Beware how you believe what Sylvia Blyden writes. She may have got the interview but other newspapers may not have attempted.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: J
To: All
Date Posted: 08:12:48 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host86-129-107-88.range86-129.btcentralplus.com at 86.129.107.88
Message:
First Lady, Sia Koroma was in a position to have corrected Sylvia when she made that assertion. Failing to correct her is clearly endorsing Sylvia's assertion.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: Who Says
To: All
Date Posted: 12:58:45 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Who says once you have written something good for them, leaders care to correct missatatements ?
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: Gibril
To: All
Date Posted: 19:02:02 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
Thanks for your compliments, Kabs. I pray for the day you would shake hands and forget the past with our sister.
For those who don't know, I have over 20 years experience in this profession, starting with Paul Kamara's For Di People in the early 80s, to Chea Cheapoo's STANDARD in Liberia, then back to freetown with For Di People again, Concord Times, Expo Times, the New Citizen(French edition), the New Breed, the BBC French service, Radio France Internationale, Reporters without Borders(Correspondent in Sierra Leone. And then to Ghana where I worked with Kabral's(former Ghana ambassador in Sierra Leone)Independent newspaper(Associate Editor) and finally to Canada where I worked for a magazine and a radio station. I now own my own magazine in Canada in addition to the Vanguard. Need I say more? I normally don't like to blow my own horn. I believe in ACTION, something I learned at the Albert Academy(Rather to be than to seem). Cheers, bro.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: Gibril
To: All
Date Posted: 19:06:32 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
I forgot to mention that I wrote(in French)for a couple of weeks for LE LYNX newspaper in Conakry, Guinea while I was in that country late 90s.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 20:05:02 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
GIBRIL,
You don't need to mention all these things.You just stay in the background. I am just trying to expose how biased and unfair people are when they praise the wrong newspapers. They see all the improvements you have made on your newspaper but did any of them ever mention it ? No. They did not. They will not because they still consider you to be APC, though you have tried to be independent. If you were ourightly supporting them, they would have praised you. For layout, your paper is the best. And you are doing a great job to be constantly updating now.
I have been actively in Journalism for 37 years. I wrote articles for great journalists like Ibrahim Taqi, Sam Metzger( The Doyen of journalism in Sierra Leone ) Rufus Dapoh ( Liberia's Sam Metzger , to me. One of the best journalists that ever lived ).When you write for great people like these, it rubs off on you. I was Editor of two great newspapers on FBC Campus -SPOTLIGHT and COCORIOKO. FBC is the centre of learning in West Africa with all the book men and women.You know you don't just write trash up there .You won't outlast your first publication. That was 1972-75. Downtown, I worked with Pios Foray , Hindolo Trye and Frank Kposowa on THE TABLET . You will admit that whatever his political leaning today, Pios was at one time one of the best. While in Liberia ,I worked as Sports Correspondent for WE YONE, with the greatest sportswriter of our time, John Kolosa Kargbo as my mentor. In Liberia,I contributed articles to one of the finest newspapers, the DAILY OBSERVER, edited then by the best editorial writer I have ever met in the person of Mr. Stanton Peabody and published by the Liberian Doyen of Journalism, Kenneth Best. You have to really write sense for DAILY OBSERVER to publish your Op/Ed articles. I also contributed articles to the BBC African Program in the 1980s , with the late Chris.Pickerton( Focus on Africa ) as my point man . In America in the 90s,I worked for the SIERRA LEONEAN NEWSLETTER, published then by a brilliant and promising young man, Dauda Bangura.I also worked on the WEST AFRICAN JOURNAL with another promising young man , Joe Kappia. You and I worked for EXPO TIMES before we established our own newspapers.
When you work with the big names in the profession,you learn and rise through the ranks.Infact, in the good, old days, that's how journalists were trained. When I was doing the DIPLOMA IN JOURNALISM course with the London School of Journalism in the 70s, that was what I learned--Great journalists start by being assigned to a small, provincial newspaper and they work and rise through the ranks to a city newspaper and then to a big newspaper.
Journalists are one set of professionals that schools alone do not produce. Nobody becomes a great journalist by just getting a journalism degree or diploma.The nitty-gritty of the trade you learn by hands-on experience. Bring somebody who has a PH.D in Journalism and somebody who went through the ranks to reach a big height and guess what ? The man with experience might do better. There are certain things in journalism you don't learn in the classroom but on the paper.
Anyway, some of the folks on this forum are ignorant, whatever their degrees so you don't bother their ignorant and unlearned minds with these gem we expatiate.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: Gibril
To: All
Date Posted: 21:32:30 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
Yes, man. Stanton Peabody is my kind of guy. I used to contribute to the sports page of the Observer through Omari Jackson, the sports editor. I was actually introduced to hardcore journalism in Liberia, during Samuel Doe's brutal regime.Those were the days.
Wrote for Chucks press and Aureol Times at FBC.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 00:45:49 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
Bo, nar me bin get Chuks Press .I also worked for Aureol Times too. We produced one of the wildest editions that cause the suspension of the Editor, Andrew Bangalie.
Nor men de ignoramus dem nar dis forum.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: gibril
To: All
Date Posted: 13:30:50 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-ntc-ad04.proxy.aol.com at 207.200.116.198
Message:
Great. My editor at Aureol Times was Kayode Robbin-Coker. Most of the writers would "canalise" the day the paper comes out. Gangs of angry people would roam the halls looking for "den basta pekin dem dey". That was fun.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: ok pa
To: All
Date Posted: 19:51:20 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: papoose@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-71-224-131-184.hsd1.nj.comcast.net at 71.224.131.184
Message:
congratulations my brother. i am so proud of you. you have got the job lol
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: Jack
To: All
Date Posted: 15:21:16 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: static-70-20-197-79.phil.east.verizon.net at 70.20.197.79
Message:
Kabs bo blow.
you are messing up the whole stuff as people can no longer differentiate between Kabs the Joindalist and Kabs the person.
Subject: Re: TO ME, THE MOST IMPROVED PAPER IS PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
From: POLITICAL
To: All
Date Posted: 15:28:46 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: smtpgateway.azdes.gov at 207.108.136.242
Message:
When is criticism is an attack?
Subject: Rampage of the bad losers. They will not discourage me.
From: KABS KANU
To: All
Date Posted: 15:06:46 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS, there has been a flurry of attacks on this forum on the President, Mr. Ernest Bai Koroma , the APC and anything associated with it.Correspondingly, there has been an attempt to project the SLPP as an impeccable party that does no wrong. In addition, a subtle way was being designed to over-praise SLPP Propaganda newspapers the New People and Awareness Times .
I want all those defending me to know that I will not be discouraged. I know where I am coming from and where I am going. I am not in competition with anybody.KAMANDA HAS JUST SENT OUR OWN PICTURES AND I AM GOING TO TAKE MY TIME NOW TO PUBLISH THEM. I WAS IN SCHOOL AND JUST GOT HOME. I DID NOT EVEN SEE THE POSTS FORUM POLICE IS TALKING ABOUT .
I want our readers to be assured that with our new format and new reorganization, we are going to lift our performance and get even better and better and better. Please leave the bad losers to their own wiles.
Subject: APC get STYLE! See Inauguration Pics!
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 14:36:19 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
You have to give it to us . We get style!! To all SLppers,You cant buy style!!!
Subject: Re: APC get STYLE! See Inauguration Pics!
From: Bugsyb
To: All
Date Posted: 16:11:41 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: aburneynic@yahoo.co.uk
Entered From: acbcea60.ipt.aol.com at 172.188.234.96
Message:
What we need now is SUBSTANCE not STYLE.
Subject: Re: APC get STYLE! See Inauguration Pics!
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 23:07:49 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
Bugs, EBK has no choice but to deliver. I have a doubt in my mind that improvements will come.
Subject: Re: APC get STYLE! See Inauguration Pics!: Correction
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 23:09:20 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
I have NO doubt change will come!
Subject: WE WILL DELETE ALL UNPAID FOR ADVERTS ON THIS FORUM
From: FORUM POLICE
To: All
Date Posted: 14:23:54 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
We will not allow other people to advertise their wares on this forum unpaid. We are going to hire somebody with the special responsibility to delete all unpaid-for adverts on this forum
If you have a newspaper or business and you want to advertise it on this forum, go through the proper channel. You don't have to sneak in and use other methods to advertise her . If you want to advertise, you have to pay for it.
We will also block the IPs of people who try to use this forum to take advantage of us and advertise surreptitiously.
Do not be cheap, guys. Pay or else we will delete.
Subject: Re: WE WILL DELETE ALL UNPAID FOR ADVERTS ON THIS FORUM
From: SLPP
To: All
Date Posted: 14:52:09 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: host-24-225-180-80.patmedia.net at 24.225.180.80
Message:
You have our support hundred percent, Forum Police. The people behind all these posts are SLPP Propagandists who have gone on the rampage. The reason that these people post all these things is to embarass Kabs because of the good licking he gave them during the elections. That is their own way of getting back at him , by promoting Awareness Times and the New People here.
If these people are sincere, why are they not praising PATRIOTIC VANGUARD, which is developing fast ? Why have they not praised COCORIOKO's new format, which is now one of the best ? You will know that they are biased.
Kabs and moderator and forum police must delete these provocative posts .SLPP were beaten in the elections. They are dead and gone.The palm tree has fallen.There is no other way to bring it back, so guys, accept defeat and leave Kabs Kanu alone.
Subject: Re: WE WILL DELETE ALL UNPAID FOR ADVERTS ON THIS FORUM
From: SANTOS MANGA
To: All
Date Posted: 14:42:38 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: santos@aol.com
Entered From: host81-132-230-78.range81-132.btcentralplus.com at 81.132.230.78
Message:
This is journalism at its lowest. The real reason behind your action is not unpaid adverts but the fact that people have posted about Sylvia's scoop. Shame on you all. You can delete my post if you wish.
Subject: CHAD BAILOR
From: Sababu
To: All
Date Posted: 14:16:48 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: dele25@yahoo.com
Entered From: pool-70-17-110-231.res.east.verizon.net at 70.17.110.231
Message:
The Maryland Sa Lone has suffered a double hit today with the death of Chad Bailor and O'keefe
Subject: Re: CHAD BAILOR
From: Ronaldino
To: All
Date Posted: 14:58:41 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: 82-44-17-83.cable.ubr04.croy.blueyonder.co.uk at 82.44.17.83
Message:
O'keefe?
Subject: WHERE IS NGOR CHARLES
From: SANTOS MANGA
To: All
Date Posted: 13:54:07 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: santos@aol.com
Entered From: host81-132-230-78.range81-132.btcentralplus.com at 81.132.230.78
Message:
DID YOU SEE HIM OR HIS PMDC OUTFIT AT THE APC DANCE? NGOR CHARLES YOU'VE DANCED YOUR LAST DANCE. AS THEY SAY 'SWITCH THE LIGHT OFF WHEN YOU LEAVE THE HALL'.
Subject: AWARENESS TIMES
From: FEN PLABA 2
To: All
Date Posted: 13:06:48 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
REV TRUE SAY TALK ME, DR B HAS BIT YOU TO THE PUNCH WITH INURGURAL PICTURES, SO YOU HAVE TO COME UP NOW WITH THE VIDEO LINK
DSB
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: Peter
To: All
Date Posted: 13:54:45 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-dtc-ag14.proxy.aol.com at 205.188.117.142
Message:
I dont know , but let's call a spade a spade, she is rough and aggresive, but she does deliver.
A message to all, put your money where your mouth is, all smoke and no fire, how about that Mr. Mortgage banker.
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: Sadam Insane
To: All
Date Posted: 14:12:41 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: Sorba_1@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 63.172.247.7
Message:
Hay Kabs bo omojuba man. This girl na salone e dae o if e bin dae ya so you bee for be an ant. Call am e omojuba. Shame no mix.
na so a say
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: SANTOS MANGA
To: All
Date Posted: 14:00:22 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: santos@aol.com
Entered From: host81-132-230-78.range81-132.btcentralplus.com at 81.132.230.78
Message:
KABS CALL SYLVIE BABY AND CONGRATULATE HER AS BEREWA DID TO EBK. SHE IS YOUR SISTER.
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: Candid Opinion
To: All
Date Posted: 13:20:47 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: ip68-100-48-137.dc.dc.cox.net at 68.100.48.137
Message:
I am sitting here in awe..
Man, that sylvia titi get balls..
3 interviews..
One kabba..
One Berewa..
One first lady...
Next EBK himself...
And to top it all.............
Brilliantly captioned photos of the presidential election too....
No wonder she is called names allllllllover the place..
She wears briefs...while some men wear thongs...
She just pulled the journalistic coup of the century, right under the nose of the mainstream pro, osaiiiiiiiiiiiiii (faint late) newspapers.
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: SANTOS MANGA
To: All
Date Posted: 13:49:38 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: santos@aol.com
Entered From: host81-132-230-78.range81-132.btcentralplus.com at 81.132.230.78
Message:
DID ANYONE SEE NGOR CHARLES OR PMDC AT THE APC DANCE? HE'S LONG FORGOTTEN I GUESS.
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 13:43:11 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 204.50.182.249
Message:
Impressive turnaround of innauguration pictures supported by interviews with interesting personalities. Kudos.
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: SANTOS MANGA
To: All
Date Posted: 13:41:03 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: santos@aol.com
Entered From: host81-132-230-78.range81-132.btcentralplus.com at 81.132.230.78
Message:
Candid that's what they call serious journalism.
Subject: Re: AWARENESS TIMES
From: Sadam Insane
To: All
Date Posted: 13:47:40 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: sorba_1@yahoo.com
Entered From: at 63.172.247.7
Message:
Sylvia you are the best. Kabs were are the Pictures man. Da titi get one on you. May be Muck can help you out-Kudos Sylvia
Subject: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: news
To: All
Date Posted: 13:04:06 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
Does the Bank of SL Governor-Nominee need to change his priorities?
- Thursday 15 November 2007.
Commentary
By Mohamed Jalloh.
As the new APC government moves to appoint Sierra Leoneans to fill positions in the all-important financial management functions in Sierra Leone’s economy, comments reportedly made by the nominee for Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Dr. Samura Kamara, at his parliamentary confirmation hearings, raise serious questions about whether he has the proper perspective required for the job.
According to the November 14, 2007 edition of the Awoko newspaper of SL: "The nominee to serve as Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Dr Samura Kamara, told the Appointments Committee that his vision would be to ensure domestic price stability and stable economic policy backed by a sound financial policy. Asked how he would be able to let the Leone be equaled to the dollar and when the country would have value for its money, Dr Kamara said if it were possible for the central bank to reverse that it would be fine. But stated that it was not possible as there were factors that drive the value of a currency. "It is every body’s wish to have a high value of the Leone but it cannot stand on its own without being supported by other factors," he said.
"What is more important than anything else," he went on "is the stability of the exchange rate. You will wake up tomorrow and the exchange rate is not erratic, then you look out for investors but the value also functions on the inflation."
Before analyzing the nominee’s surprising comments quoted above, I would like to commend the member(s) of parliament who raised the issue of the necessity of restoring the value of the Leone at the nominee’s confirmation hearings. It is a necessity that I explained, together with my learned friend, Jonathan M. Rose, in our published article in the Concord Times and at AllAfrica.com on January 30 this year, entitled "The Revaluation of SL’s Currency." Cf. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SALONEDiscussion/message/2339
In our article, we summarized the case for restoring the value of the Leone against the U.S. dollar as a prerequisite for the development of SL as follows:
"As the example of pre-World War II Germany attests, it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy. With a currency that has depreciated by more than 375,000 % since it was first devalued in 1979, and a people frequently ranked as the poorest in the world, SL’s economy is in dire crisis.
We believe that the single greatest contributor to SL’s economic crisis is the same one as that identified by one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, Lord John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain. In his seminal 1919 treatise, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," Lord Keynes accurately predicted that the destruction of the value of the German currency would precipitate a second world war, because, as he put it: "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." For largely similar reasons, we believe SL’s economic crisis to be rooted in the debauchery of the country’s currency. Accordingly, we propose a never-before-tried measure in SL — the revaluation of Sierra Leone’s currency — as the cornerstone of an economic recovery program for our country. This proposal is aimed at reversing the unprecedented inflation and other distortions in SL’s economy in the wake of the 1979 devaluation and subsequent depreciation of the Leone that have made it virtually impossible to sustain economic growth or alleviate poverty."
It is a promising sign that the new parliament understands that the key to resolving SL’s economic problems lies most fundamentally in rehabilitating our country’s needlessly devastated currency. It is especially heartening to learn that the consciousness of Sierra Leoneans, in general, has now been raised to such a high level that the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL feels obliged to agree with a parliamentarian(s) that the current astronomical exchange rate of the Leone to the dollar is undesirable and, therefore, the value of our unnecessarily weakened currency, the Leone, needs to be restored.
However, it is rather disappointing to note that, even though the nominee reportedly believes that our country’s catastrophically weakened currency’s value should be rehabilitated, he expressed the view that it is impossible to do so — whereas, in our article, Jonathan and I clearly outlined how it is indeed possible to do so.
So, in response to the nominee’s unequivocal answer that he believes that it is impossible to achieve the desirable goal of restoring the value of the Leone, the parliamentarians on the Appointments Committee should have followed up his answer with two simple, but very important, questions, namely:
1. Why do you think it is impossible to achieve the desirable goal of reducing the catastrophically escalated exchange rate between the Leone and the U.S. dollar?
2. Given that you have already agreed that it is desirable to reduce the astronomically high exchange rate between the Leone and the dollar, why should we confirm your appointment to be Governor of the Bank of SL when, by your own admission, you do not believe it is possible to restore the exchange rate of the Leone to parity with the dollar (and thereby you will fail to significantly bring down the cost of living that has impoverished millions of Sierra Leoneans and made it impossibly expensive for Sierra Leoneans to effectively compete with foreigners in SL’s economy)?
In my humble opinion, if the nominee fails to answer the above questions satisfactorily, it would be eminently reasonable for the Appointments Committee to question whether he is the right man to be appointed governor of the Bank of SL at this particular time. This is because, currently, the greatest problem facing SL is not corruption, but the devastation of the value of the Leone that itself makes it all but certain that pervasive corruption among ordinary Sierra Leoneans would become a necessity for their literal survival.
Finally, the nominee needs to be asked to explain his statement that "[w]hat is more important than anything else is the stability of the exchange rate," which seems to suggest that he does not agree with the well-established economic principle that the rate of the exchange rate is more important in determining economic activity in a country than fluctuations in the exchange rate.
Thus, to say that "[w]hat is more important than anything else is the stability of the exchange rate," as the nominee is reported to have told the SL Parliament, is akin to someone telling a poor man: "What is important is not the actual price that you will pay for this food, but the fact that the price is stable." Under that scenario attested to by the nominee, there is no difference between a poor man paying $20 for a good and paying $2,000 for the same good, because, according to the nominee, "[w]hat is more important than anything else is the stability of the [price]." Which means, in the mind of the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL, as long as the price does not fluctuate, it makes no difference to him whether the price the poor are asked to pay for a good or service is $20 or $2,000.
Such a position is exactly opposite to that required to bring down the oppressive cost of living that has made virtual paupers of millions of Sierra Leoneans. Therefore, if the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL is serious about reducing the cost of living in SL — the number one priority of any serious government — he must change his view that it is impossible to restore the value of the devastated Leone to parity with the dollar. In addition, the nominee must change his view that the actual rate of exchange between the Leone and the dollar is not as important as the stability of the exchange rate.
If the nominee for governor of the Bank of SL does not change his positions, there is a high probability that, just as his predecessors did, he would fail to resolve the most pressing and pervasive current economic problem facing SL — massive, escalating inflation imported through the catastrophically high exchange rate of the Leone to the dollar which has impoverished millions of Sierra Leoneans and made it impossibly expensive for the average Sierra Leonean to effectively compete with foreigners in SL’s economy.
Editors Note: Moh’m Jalloh (photo), a native of Sierra Leone resident in Maryland, is the founding Managing Director of a financial services firm in suburban Washington, D.C., USA. The above article is adapted from his recent response to a fellow member of SALONEDiscussion, the pioneering Internet discussion forum dedicated exclusively to the serious discussion of issues related to SL with the aim of advancing the development of the country. SALONEDiscussion recently sent a compendium of recommendations to the President of SL that includes proposals for restoring the value of the Leone against the dollar, and for restoring electricity, water and sanitation services in SL. This newspaper will shortly be publishing excerpts from the compendium.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Old Timer
To: All
Date Posted: 14:20:16 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 64.26.98.90
Message:
Here's my question to the article's author (it is also to you if you agree with him): Do you want to tell me that all these years, the many governors and ministers of finance did not know how to solve the exchange rate problem in Salone?
Why is it only now, under the new APC, that the parliemment and the new governor-to-be are agreeing that we need to make the Lewone equals to the dollar?
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: news
To: All
Date Posted: 15:47:24 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
for the records, i agree with the writer. like the article saysn the british man Keynes said, if youndon't have a strong currency in a country, the economy itself will go down sooner or later.
as for your question, I don't know why these other governors and politicians from Bandele Stevens to kabbahlaria days did not do what the writer of the article is recommending.
One thing that might explain whyb the previous peopl fail to think for themselves is that they were all worshipping their paymaster the foreingn donors. You know that those are the ones that piad the piper so they called the tunes for Salone's leaders. And you know the donor'd whipis the Imf AND THE WOLRD BANK TOO. that is whatbthe donors use to flog their policies (non pun intended).
Or, it may be that you always had square pegws in round holes as governors of the Abank of Salone. It could also be that the reason is a combination of the those two reasons.
One laast thing I want to say is that kudos to Mohamed Jalloh, a sierra leoneans like us for his foresight in econmic thinking. He prove to us that he has the brains to think outside the box when he openly challenges the harnful thinking of noutb masters' voice aka IMF /World Bank.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 16:57:54 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.149.186.123
Message:
"it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy."
What would you say about Ghana's currency and the economy what about Japanese (the second economic power)currency and economy.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: news
To: All
Date Posted: 18:22:48 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
Not sure what your point is, but5 perhaps you can help me by answering this question: Did the exchange rate of either country's currency depreciate by 375 THOUSAND percent, as I understand our country's Leone deteriorated since it was first devaulued in 1979?
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 09:03:49 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: du-102-0087.access.clara.net at 217.158.67.87
Message:
The leone is stronger than the the cedi by far. And Japan's being the world's second strongest economy should have a higher valued currency if what you intimated is correct.
The Greek's economy is not as strong as the UK's and US but their currency is heavier than the two mentioned above. So whatever your point is I don't agree with your analysis.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: news
To: All
Date Posted: 09:58:13 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
the purpose of my question was to try to help you understand the error in your attempt to equate the exchange rate history of the Japanese and Ghanaian currencies with that of our Leone.
It makes it difficult for me to help myou do tthat if you keep avoiding answering my question. Here it is again,in case you want to finally answer it: Did the exchange raate of either Ghana'a or Japan's currency decline by over 375,000% over the past 30 years? The answer is a simple yes or no. Hopefully that is not too hard a question for you to can answer.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 12:12:19 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 89.240.211.232
Message:
I'm only trying to see that your analsis doesn't reflect the depriciation of our currency, rather there are prevailing factors that strongly contributed to the fall of the currency.
Meanwhile, I'm not a school child you can demand to give a yes or no answer, however, the reason I mention Ghana is that the leone is much stronger than the cedi but the economy of Ghana is much stronger than that of Sierra Leone. When you said a country with worthless currency is sooner or later become a worthless. These are your words if I'm not mistaking on your ealier posting, because you deliberately ignored the factors that governs inflation and deflation.
I'm not to trying to dispute your analysis entirely.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Helping Hand
To: All
Date Posted: 12:32:06 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
$Eddie, if I can come in here. I think your confusionn is that you regard the mere exchange exchange rate as an indication that a countr's currency is worthless. I don't thinik the article says that. It used the term debauchery -- which does not meqan merely that the exchange rate is high -- as you appear to understand.
On the contrary, what I think the article means by debauchery is that INSIDEA the country itself the value of the currency is worhless AND outside -- the exchange rate. In other words, internal inflation has rendereed nthe currency locally worthless AND THE HIGH EXCHJANGE RATE HAS RENDERED IT EXTERNALLY WORHTLESS -- HENCE THE TERM DENAUCHERY OF THE CURRENCY. I hope yiou now understand better what the artticle refers to as a worthless currency does not merely mean high exdchange rate only.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Eddie Grant
To: All
Date Posted: 13:29:12 11/16/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 78.146.199.169
Message:
You've completely miunderstood my position here, please go back and read my post. I'm only trying to allow others to see the quote below and make sense of it.
"it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy."
I have always respect other people's opinions, but refused to get carried away by something I strongly don't believe in and that my person.
In this discussion, I'm not trying to dismiss anybody's opinion but putting my point across.
If you could convince me by providing evidence that above quote is definately the case, then I might give the praise untill then I will stick to my limited knowledge. I gave a bright example but so far you've refuse make any meaningful analysis on that.
Please outline your predictions on the future economy of Ghana since " it is a truism that a country with a worthless currency will become, sooner or later, a country with a worthless economy."
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Mohamed Boye Jallo Jamboria
To: All
Date Posted: 09:00:06 11/16/07 ()
Email Address: mbjalj@online.no
Entered From: ti400720a080-1343.bb.online.no at 83.108.197.63
Message:
I am not a trained economist but as far as my understanding of development issues go with my background in economic geography,a currency's value is a reflection of many factors paramount of whcih is the trade strategies of the state.
An overvalued currency can be a trade setback whilst an hyper devalued currency simply reflects a poor state of economy.
The bottom line here is consumption versus production;import versus export.That is not a task for the Bank of Sierra Leone alone but all state machanism that is invloved in the protection of the integrity and assets of the state.
The value of a currency in these terms does not deter a balance of payment that does not reflect deficits in the sense that when an economy produces and export more than it imports then the balance of payment will always be on the surplus side whereas when an economy imports more than it exports there is definatley going to be recurring deficits and in such cases there is always need to devalue and adjust the local currency's value to attract more buyers of it's less exports at a rate cheaper than should be for more foreign currency to be acquired.If,on the other hand, Sierra Leone has had to compete in terms of selling it's resources in a market that is very competitive with regards it resources then there would have been need for a devlaued currency.
The case of Sierra Leone SINCE THE FIRST DEVALUATION after the closure of DELCO and SLST has been victimisation because Stevens asked for more benefit to the nation from the profits in the first placeand wrong placement of proirities,especially by allowing a free for all exploitation of the resources especially in the mining sector with resources like diamonds ,rutile that are in demand with more or less very high competitive value and high dividends. The damage that the economy suffered in the hands of businesses that had no moral commitment to the development of Sierra Leone,aided and abated by unscrupolous locals in both the political and pubilc scetors has brought the country to this present situation.
If Sierra Leone is to see a reversal of this, REVENUE COLLECTION and proper EXPORT ACCOUNTING must be the core policy of the new political economy.As a matter of fact the new government must review the percentum tax paid by exporters for most of the country's assets like Diamonds,Gold,Rutile and cash crops.
That implies that very positive steps must be taken to crub smuggling of these assets.This is not a task for the Bank of Sierra Leone or the Governor alone but all state instututions invloved in the protection of the integrity and assets of the State.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: KKW
To: All
Date Posted: 13:17:24 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 204.50.182.249
Message:
I also thought that the nominees response was rather weak for what was hoped to be a more dynamic role for the BOSL. My only hope is that the Awoko reporter did not record the complete answer because this quote does not make the slightest sense whatsoever!
"What is more important than anything else," he went on "is the stability of the exchange rate. You will wake up tomorrow and the exchange rate is not erratic, then you look out for investors but the value also functions on the inflation."
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Economist
To: All
Date Posted: 13:37:16 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
That was also my hope -- that the nominee was misquoted when he said: "What is more important than anything else," he went on "is the stability of the exchange rate. You will wake up tomorrow and the exchange rate is not erratic, then you look out for investors but the value also functions on the inflation."
Not only does the statement not make any economic sense, it sounds like a limp excuse the IMF would make to justify impoverishing Sierra Leoneans by keeping the value of the Leone in the basement of the world's currencies.
But when I read the nominee's other statement that the writer of the article, Moh'm Jalloh, noted, I became convinced that the nomineee was not misquoted by Awaoko. The quote I am talking about is where the nomineee said everyone wants to stregthem the value of the Laoene so that it equals a dolar but it is NOT possible to do so!
When I read that, I said to myself: What? Is that the attitude of someone who wants to help the impoveriwshed peopel of Sierra leone whose lives have been impoverished a detsruction of the valiuue of the once stronger-than-the dollar Leone? Of course, not.
I fear for the new APC government that its nominee for Governor of the bank of Sierra leone represents "continuity" at the BoSL -- even though the people of Sierra Leone have said no to SLPP continuity of failed economic policies lsuch as those the nominee is advocating that come staright from the IMF playbook.
Does anyone know if the nominee had any connections with the IMF? Because he sure seems to be toeing the IMF line that has impoverished our people for no reason.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: IMF
To: All
Date Posted: 13:49:43 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: cache-mtc-ah10.proxy.aol.com at 64.12.117.202
Message:
is it true that Dr. Samura Kamara once worked for the IMF?
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Old Timer
To: All
Date Posted: 14:26:55 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 64.26.98.90
Message:
I worked at Ban of Sierra leone at the time the AFRC coupmakers overrun the country. I remember that it was at that time that Samura Kamara, like many others, escaped from Salone. The next thing I heard about him was that he was working for the IMF in Washington.
I can't believe that President Bai Koroma did not know that before he nominated him to be bank governor. I don't know but if people say he sounds like he is carrying water for the IMF, I say, he may well be. Matter fo fact, how do we know that the IMF id n ot demand from Prezzo Koroma that he make Samura the bank new Bank of Salone governor? That wold make perfect sense if the IMF has a vested interest in keeping the value of the Leone at less than one third of one cent now (Le3000 = $1.00).
Let us hope Prezo Ernest Koroma is not a folloo for the IMF to fool like they did all the other Salone leaders, starting with Sika Stevens.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: FINANCE MAN
To: All
Date Posted: 15:20:32 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: makeni_one@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-114-235-58.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.114.235.58
Message:
Mr.Samura is a [very] smart man; his response(s) to the question(s) posed to him are adequate. Sometimes I wonder what people might be thinking or lack thereof when they ask certain questions. In finance as we know it, before certain outcomes are to be realized, the underlining variables that will propel that outcome will have to be working in sync. And as we know it in the field, there are those variables that no one person/country/continent can control. Such variables may include the following: political, socio-economic, justice, national or international events and others (global world). The Iraq war is a classic example of how one event in one part of the world can affect a multitude of nations. The price [barrel] of crude oil today is almost four times its price prior to the start of the war. Therefore it would be unwise for Mr. Samura to give any definitive answers while he does not have the tools needed to measure actual indicators that will aid him in make approximations of how strong the Leone will be in the coming years. My advice to him however is to identify key indicators (factors) he believes will help strengthen the Leone, before he starts developing fiscal and economic plans to address the Leone issue. I am available for consultation.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: Old Timer
To: All
Date Posted: 18:28:36 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: pool-71-126-189-51.washdc.east.verizon.net at 71.126.189.51
Message:
I disagree with your thibking. You say Samura is smart, bu5t then you say he should indentify the key indicators that he thinks would strengthen the Leone before he startsv planning how to strengthen the Leone. But the man has already said it is impossible to strengthen the leone -- before thinking about how to do it!!
What smart man talks before thinking?
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: FINANCE MAN
To: All
Date Posted: 20:10:45 11/15/07 ()
Email Address: makeni_one@yahoo.com
Entered From: c-76-114-235-58.hsd1.md.comcast.net at 76.114.235.58
Message:
I stand by what I said about the [smart] man. You folks expect him to work magic in fixing Sierra Leone's economy that has been dysfunctional for the last forty years, overnight. Regardless of what he [Mr. Samura] said or thinks, the Leone will not be in parity with the dollar until short and long strategic plans are put in place. I am available for consultation.
Subject: Re: ADVICE TO THE NOMINEE FOR GOVERNOR OF BANK OF SL
From: value
To: All
Date Posted: 15:35:03 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: gw2.dc.gov at 164.82.144.3
Message:
Good thinking...The value of high demand Natural resources,from a resource rich Nation like Salone could add value to the leone.
Subject: REWIND
From: REWIND
To: All
Date Posted: 12:17:32 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: c-68-49-205-105.hsd1.va.comcast.net at 68.49.205.105
Message:
PRESS BRIEFING STATEMENT BY JOHN E. LEIGH
JOHN LEIGH SUPPORTS SOLOMON BEREWA FOR PRESIDENT
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press:
Thank you for accepting my invitation to attend this Press Briefing.
I hope each one of you will report fully and accurately to all your numerous readers and listeners, respectively, the relevant remarks made here today.
I am holding this briefing to inform all my fellow citizens of Sierra Leone and all my friends and well wishers abroad that I am supporting Vice President Solomon Berewa for the office of the President of Sierra Leone beginning in 2007 in succession to President Tejan Kabbah.
I support VP Berewa as our next President because I believe he is the most qualified candidate among those currently vying for the presidency. In my experience, Mr. Berewa is known to be far more experienced, far more educated, far more able, and far more good-intentioned than any other candidate contesting with him.
I know Mr. Berewa to be nationalistic, not tribalistic. Mr. Berewa is known to me as a mature leader free from petulance, political selfishness and rash actions. In fact, he is quite deliberative.
BEREWA WILL MOVE SIERRA LEONE FORWARD
I believe that when elected, Solomon Berewa will pursue policies and implement practices to improve international affairs, promote economic development, protect our institutions, advance women's rights and institute law reforms.
While one candidate has already announced that he prefers to impose a dictatorship up on us but ONLY under his so-called benevolent leadership, VP Berewa seeks genuine democracy. And while another opposition candidate will most certainly impose a harsh tribal hegemony upon us, I believe Mr. Berewa will strive for efficient, responsible, representative government composed of highly trained, experienced and good-intentioned officials in order to move the country forward regardless of gender, tribe, region, or religion.
Mr. Berewa has personally assured me that considerable attention and resources will be concentrated in waging a war against poverty; food insufficiencies; improving Sierra Leone's image and respect worldwide and in uplifting the lives and the general wellbeing of our people.
Under his leadership, I expect that laws that discriminate against women and hinder their advancement will be repealed or reformed as would laws that criminalized libel. No more jail time for Sierra Leone journalists.
I believe that many more qualified people from all regions of our country will be more willing to work with VP Berewa for the advancement of Sierra Leone than for any of his rivals.
I BELONG ONLY TO THE SLPP
As the leader of the SLPP, Mr. Berewa heads the one political party in Sierra Leone that belongs to all its members equally and which possesses a culture of internal democracy – the very culture I personally live by.
This is in sharp contrast to the situation in the two other political parties that are either owned by one man; or very new with no tract record; or monopolized in a significant way by members of one single tribe as evidenced by the disproportionate numbers of top officials and cadets – civilian, police and military – that they appointed from only a few chiefdoms in only one province in their pre-war governments.
I learned recently that one immature politician and his close supporters have been telling his membership falsely that Dr. James Jonah and I are with him in his new party; and that we might even be contesting for the leadership of his party. This is talking rubbish, nonsense. That man's party is a one-man affair and a useless dictatorship and was set-up to improperly confiscate the much talked about Third Force.
I am a member of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party and will so remain. I know that that are some serious internal problems within the SLPP. However, I have no intention of leaving my party and joining any of the other two parties - let alone take part in a phony leadership contest in a new party of dictatorship. I plan to continue to seek reforms from within the SLPP.
Dr. Jonah retains his friendship with President Tejan Kabbah, the SLPP President of Sierra Leone. From what I know of him, I can tell you that Dr. Jonah is unlikely to participate in any political venture predicated on vexation and dynastic ambition and whose leadership, from its public acts, oozes immaturity. At any rate, I do not speak for Dr. Jonah. I am only giving you my views in light of the persistent rubbish talk that he and I will be contesting the leadership position in one of the new parties.
PLEASE GIVE BEREWA YOUR FULL SUPPORT
I appeal to all the people of Sierra Leone who believe in what I stand for to join me in supporting Mr. Solomon Berewa for President and in vigorously campaigning for him with me so that he will most certainly become our next President in 2007.
SLPP WANTS YOU TO REJOIN YOUR PARTY
I appeal to all those SLPP members who have left the party to join new-fangled opportunistic parties to please return to your SLPP home and join me in helping to make our party more democratic and stronger. Long after the 2007 elections have come and gone, SLPP will be around ready to help you.
No one can say the same thing for a one-man, new party born in vexation and grounded in vaulting personal ambition. Nor can one put any hope in a party whose mind-bogging, long, bad record in office, notorious tribalism, poverty-generating practices and narrow mindedness will keep it from winning national elections in the foreseeable future because large numbers of people suffered grievous wrongs under their power.
PLEASE JOIN ME TO FIGHT TRIBALISM
As we Sierra Leoneans get closer to each other; learn better from each other, sensible people will realize that there is no place for tribalism in our country's future. We will all come to understand that either we all must advance and prosper together or we will all fall together!
I therefore appeal to my Northern brethrens who truly abhor tribalism and who seek genuine democracy, justice and development to forthwith cross-over en-mass into the SLPP and join me there in helping to make the SLPP a truly democratic and much stronger national party so that we will continue to advance our country's interest for the benefit of each one of us.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Dated in Freetown, May 22, 2006
And
Respectfully submitted
By:
John E. Leigh, Member Sierra Leone Peoples Party
Subject: Re: REWIND
From: silent majority
To: All
Date Posted: 12:39:11 11/15/07 ()
Email Address:
Entered From: at 195.54.236.138
Message:
Here he comes again!