Posted by slpp on November 24, 2007 at 13:37:16:
Is President Ernest Koroma serious about stopping corruption?
- Saturday 24 November 2007.
By Mohamed A. Jalloh (USA).
For more than ten years, the long suffering people of Sierra Leone forlornly harbored hopes for the end of their nightmare of victimization by the massive and pervasive corruption of the SLPP government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Finally, their hopes heightened earlier this year when then-presidential candidate, Ernest Bai Koroma of the APC party, declared during the presidential election campaign that the main priority of an APC government if he was elected president of Sierra Leone would be the eradication of corruption in our country. Accordingly, the majority of the people of SL placed their suddenly reinvigorated hopes on Mr. Koroma as the leader of their bid to escape escalating poverty at the hands of the internationally notorious corrupt SLPP government.
Now that the people’s wishes have finally been granted and President Koroma has assumed office, the standard by which his eminently patriotic pledge should be judged is one which I humbly suggested recently. At that time, I noted that: "Indeed, as we all hope for a change for the better in the fortunes of millions of our needlessly impoverished compatriots, we are compelled, in the interest of accuracy, to judge the performance of the new government not only by its words, but, more importantly, by its actions."
It is self-evident that the new APC government is fortunate in the timing of its ascension to power in SL. As would be true of any government not resembling the corrupt and incompetent former SLPP government, the APC government looked good since the earliest days of its administration largely because of its good fortune in having succeeded the clueless SLPP government. That is why I cautioned recently that, as welcome as President Koroma’s patriotic pronouncements were, the true test of his tenure would be whether his actions matched his words.
With President Koroma having been in office now for slightly more than two months, he now finds himself presented with an early opportunity to prove to the people of SL that his actions match the words in his much repeated pledge to root out corruption even if it involves his own family members. That opportunity is evident in the very serious allegations of corruption involving the Minister of Energy and Power, Haja Afsatu Kabbah, surrounding the bidding process for the $30 million electricity generation project, published in the November 22, 2007 edition of the Standard Times of SL. According to the newspaper, the Minister allegedly conspired with a Lebanese gentleman named Mohammed Bazzy to defraud the people of SL by rigging the bidding for the $30 million electricity generation project in favor of two companies reportedly owned by Mohammed Bazzy and Sons — Income Electrix and Global Trading Group.
Although these allegations have ben made public for sometime now, President Koroma does not appear to have taken any public action that would demonstrate to the people of SL that he is serious about his much repeated vow not to tolerate corruption in his government in regard to the allegations involving the Minister of Energy and Power.
Therefore, unless and until President Koroma launches an immediate, open, and independent criminal investigation into allegations that his own Minister of Energy and Power is involved in a massive corruption scheme regarding the bidding process for the $30 million electricity generation project, he will have no credibility in regard to his vow to demonstrate "zero tolerance" for corruption in SL.
Furthermore, since President Koroma has made the eradication of corruption the centerpiece of his presidency, the conclusion is inescapable that his failure to investigate this very serious allegation of monumental corruption deep inside his own government would doom his presidency to an early failure on its most vaunted goal — removing the scourge of corruption from our country.
It bears reiteration that the long victimized people of SL now wait to see if President Koroma’s much repeated vow to root out corruption is a serious commitment or just the empty rhetoric of another politician bent on fooling the people of SL long enough to enrich himself and his few cronies at the expense of the welfare of millions of his S/Leonean victims.
In other words, how President Koroma handles the growing scandal surrounding the $30 million electricity generation project that allegedly implicates his own Minister of Energy and Power will make clear to the long-suffering people of SL whether President Koroma is a patriotic leader, as his pronouncements suggest, or just a younger version of the very corrupt and incompetent ex-President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, whose immoral SLPP regime President Koroma and his APC party were elected to just over two months ago.
Hopefully, President Koroma will demonstrate that he is very different from his predecessor. This is especially significant because, as President Koroma will hopefully remember, he was elected by the fed-up people of SL upon his promise that he would be different — very different — from the corrupt ex-President Kabbah. The time for President Koroma to prove that he is indeed very different from his predecessor has now arrived in the wake of the allegation published in the Standard Times on November 22, 2007, that his Minister of Energy and Power conspired with a Lebanese gentleman named Mohammed Bazzy to defraud the people of SL by rigging the bidding on the $30 million electricity generation project.
In fairness to the accused Minister and Mr. Bazzy, it must be noted that the mere allegation of corruption in the recently concluded bidding process for the electricity generation project does not, in and of itself, constitute proof that corruption did occur. However, that is precisely why an investigation is necessary to lay forth before the people of SL the full facts surrounding the entire bidding process that has now been seriously questioned and which resulted in the award of the contract for the project under allegedly fraudulent circumstances to the two companies reportedly owned by Mohammed Bazzy and Sons.
Accordingly, the people of SL impatiently wait to see whether President Koroma’s actions will now match his frequently patriotic words.
Editors Note: Moh’m Jalloh (photo), is a native of Sierra Leone resident in Maryland. He is the founding Managing Director of a financial services firm based in suburban Washington, D.C., USA. This 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 very shortly be publishing excerpts from the compendium.