Sierra Leone: Let Them Own-Up; Albeit Inadvertently
By: Acim Baio Portsmouth

June 16, 2006 – (Concord Times) I comment on the piece centred on Hindolo Trye Goes APC: A Reaction from Victor Reider (SLPP) with great satisfaction because of the acknowledgement by VICTOR REIDER National Publicity Secretary- SLPP that the end of hostilities and the ushering of democracy in the 1990's was the handiwork of the ordinary Sierra Leonean. Sierra Leoneans have asked for this public admission but it took the politically insignificant joining the APC by Tyre to extract it.

As Mr Mohamed Sesay of Philadelphia observed in his contribution -The Formation of the PMDC, A Reinvigorated APC = the Nemesis of the SLPP; Awareness times, Jun 5, 2006; "The only 'achievement' the present SLPP government has continued to boast of is peace, implicitly, an end to the rebel war that plagued the country for over a decade". I can only agree with Mr. Sesay, when he pasted the brutal reality that "Peace and security are not just the absence of war but involve the search for positive conditions which can resolve the underlying causes of conflict that produce violence"; and that "Peace and security are states of well-being that individuals and, hence, nations create and experience through sustainable socio-economic development, devoid of corruption, greed, large scale unemployment, massive poverty, deprivation, exclusion, political intimidation to name a few".

Sierra Leoneans have resisted the SLPP's claim to ending hostilities in Sierra Leone because that is a false claim (Assuming difference between ending hostilities and bringing peace as aptly explicated by Mr. Sesay is well understood, it follows that we are yet to enjoy peace in Sierra Leone). The people's resistance to negative power, from the struggle with the rebels in the form of civil defence onto the arrest of Foday Sankoh is more than adequate to justify giving the better part of the credit for ending hostilities to Sierra Leoneans. SLPP might have played a part as one does not need to score 0% to fail - even 10% is a disgraceful grade. But how would anybody explain why SLPP would claim credit (using SLPP parlance here") for bringing peace to the country when the people had to defy the government in order to demonstrate against and arrest Foday Sankoh?

Although the publicity secretary's essay on the issues demonstrates a brilliant state of intellectual bankruptcy, we the people of Sierra Leone, accept this well deserved complements from the Publicity Secretary- SLPP in his words "If it were not for God Almighty, Bintumanni 1 and 11 and the February 26 demonstration of the women, we probably would have been longer under the yoke of the regime as they tried to manoeuvre and manipulate our people to no avail". If we were not "manoeuvred and manipulated" during the last century, needless to reaffirm our zero tolerance to such backward moves in this millennium. With regards to peace in terms of "states of well-being that individuals and, hence, nations create and experience through sustainable socio-economic development, devoid of corruption, greed, large scale unemployment, massive poverty, deprivation, exclusion, political intimidation etc" we look forward to a POSITIVE CHANGE.

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200606160676.html