By Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, OOR
Let us be honest here! Outgone President Koroma is one of the greatest leaders we have enjoyed to live under. Where the out gone President totally messed up was by too much inclusiveness of SLPP operatives at State House, Cabinet Secretariat and other key sensitive agencies. They brought Ernest Koroma and the APC down. But notwithstanding his failure at protecting the APC government from being invaded by SLPP Trojan horse operatives, the truth is that Ernest Bai Koroma was a unifier and a great Leader with a knack of keeping the peace in Sierra Leone! We enjoyed ten years of uninterrupted UNITY & PEACE under his leadership. I will deal with his unifying qualities in another piece. For today, let’s examine the 10 years of PEACE and POLITICAL TOLERANCE we enjoyed and took for granted. In the process, let us place clarity on some malicious narratives now doing the rounds including the mal-usage of an Al Jazeera video clip of March 2009 being maliciously and deliberately misrepresented as a September 2007 video.
Factually, within less than 24 hours of President Koroma taking up office in 2007, everything was back to normal. He was astute enough to allow outgoing SLPP ministers the space to do proper handing over. He even called a Cabinet meeting and invited the SLPP Ministers to sit in there with him as he listened to them one after the other and assured them of their safety. He knew Berewa/SLPP had filed a Petition to Supreme Court against his election but he was big enough not to react by being petty against SLPP. He caringly and patiently gave the SLPP space to grieve their loss. Even when he had clear evidence of malfeasance with which to demonize certain SLPP operatives when he relieved them of their duties, he never did so. Instead he quietly relieved them and never demonized them despite overwhelming evidence of corruption and malfeasance that he could have used to damage their reputations. He immediately ensured former President and all former Vice Presidents got their State entitlements. He did not cart away all of President Kabbah’s official vehicles but left President Kabbah with enough vehicles as by Law established. He regularly serviced the vehicles of former Presidents and former VPs and bought them brand new ones when necessary.
Koroma led Sierra Leone with humility and so much grace. As the newly elected President back in September 2007, Koroma asked the SLPP Ministers to kindly help him out by continuing to man their offices as Quasi-Ministers until he could appoint his own Ministers. That way the old SLPP ministers all did professional Handing Over to the new APC ministers. One after the other. I recall Awareness Times covering many of those ceremonial Handing Overs of old SLPP ministers to new APC ministers.
