Posted by Cornelius Hamelberg on November 02, 2007 at 07:50:08:
In Reply to: SLPP A Program for Reform posted by Thomas George (Boytee) on October 30, 2007 at 05:45:07:
The SLPP is currently without a leader or leadership and we are to suppose that there are many potential leaders and, as many good, even brilliant old and new ideas about reform of the SLPP and leadership of the SLPP, as there are good and brilliant people within the SLPP ranks.
The SLPP should also try to recruit new members to strengthen multi-party democracy and to strengthen the potential of the SLPP to wrest power from the APC-PMDC relations in the next election. This will undoubtedly not be an easy task – unless the APC messes up big time and the evidence of absolute power corrupting absolutely becomes too much for the electorate to stomach.
A formidable parliamentary opposition and a vigilant press whose duty it is to alert and inform the general voter public and the world about what’s happening is also very important.
The synopsis was written in 2006 and understandably most of the programme was going to be implemented by an SLPP government and so today of the proposals that Mr. George tables, the most important is certainly that of “Fresh Leadership with new ideas” and as he tells us
“Our Party must work tirelessly to Reform itself, removhg faults and detects.
We must put a stop to abuses, corruption, malpractices, tribalism, regionalism, gender-bias and all other backward tendencies. Our Party must get rid of this boredom, mixed with frustration, particularly amongst the Youths. Otherwise, it will create a toxic brew that will work against our wishes and aspirations.”
After losing the presidential and parliamentary elections, the focus has to be on a post- mortem, on analysing what went wrong - and keeping an eye on demographics which is a key factor in any election strategy and this Mr. George knows much better than I do – so that if you know how many single mothers there are in the country and New Labour style (UK) you propose the kind of legislation that could enhance their single parenthood situation, you are then assured of so many votes from them - only problem is that in budgetary proposals – at least in Sierra Leone’s political parties’ election manifestoes, no one calculates in very precise terms, where these concrete sums of money should be coming from to finance visionary proposals & development programmes – it would appear that mineral and agricultural resources are thought to generate infinitesimally unrealistic sum of money - which do not materialise when the new cabinet starts functioning and implementing the party manifesto.
So there‘s always a difference between the visionary and the real which is feasible, even in realising concrete notions like “ ZERO TOLERANCE FOR CORRUPTION “ - yes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I just got banned from Cocorioko Forum because I praised Hon. Momodou Koroma, and that’s a good example of intolerance and an absolute lack of the kind of tolerance that we find in this SLPP World wide Forum.
Let’s continue to practise democracy and tolerance here.
For starters we could listen very attentively to what Solomon Berewa and Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah have to say and also take a closer look at some of the leadership ideas of John Ernest Leigh and take a deeper look into the grievances of Hon. Charles Francis Margai, of the Margai family as we approach the next Makeni Convention, to choose a leader of the SLPP – a leader that can unite the party and reinvigorate her with new leadership and the potential to claim victory in 2012 – as we all know, an uphill task. If it was a miracle of organised effort for the APC to wrest power from an incumbent SLPP of ten years, then it will have to be a miracle of even greater effort for the SLPP to regain that power as the APC consolidates, and the Watermelons and other chameleons gravitate to the power and to where the honey is.