By KABS KANU :
Opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP) supporters are very angry this morning. A look at all the forums online controlled by SLPP operatives expose unrestrained anger and expletives are being hurled here and there at journalists and supporters of President Ernest Bai Koroma and the ruling All People’s Congress (APC ). There is anger in the SLPP camp because what they planned to seriously embarrass President Ernest Koroma and Vice-President Sam Sumana has ended in another humiliating defeat as the American businessman, Mr. Mark Heiligman , who made unsubstantiated allegations against the Vice-President , Hon. Samuel Sam-Sumana and President Koroma over the weekend has realized that he made a mistake by mentioning the President’s name in the affair and has apologized passionately to the President and the Sierra Leonean people for what he described as an error.
PRESIDENT ERNEST KOROMA
Mr. Heiligman said he has never met President Koroma; he does not know the President Koroma and has never engaged in any business transactions with him and the only reason he mentioned the President’s name was that he was very angry and he thought that by mentioning the Head of State, speedy action would have been taken to handle his complaint. Mr. Heiligman apologized over and over, admitting that he was wrong in this matter and sincerely regretted it.
VICE-PRESIDENT SAM SUMANA
This morning, Mr. Heiligman himself has now been condemned and denounced by his own business colleagues he was speaking for .They renounced everything he said and gave the Vice-President a huge boost by exonerating him. The business man and Attorney, Mr. Todd Franck , who responded to Heiligman and discredited him even enunciated what we had said all along that this must be a political hatchet job. Mr. Todd said ”… the timing of Mr. Heiligman’s letter in regards to a business relationship that ended nearly 5 years ago is certainly suspect. …to send such a letter with elections on the horizon is no coincidence” .
Heiligman did not mention that he was manipulated by the SLPP. In fact, he denied knowing anything about the APC or SLPP or being politically-motivated. He also made it clear that he never intended to influence the forthcoming elections. But any sensible person who has been reading the pro-SLPP newspapers AND following up the obscenity-strewn SLPP online forums can deduce from the brief orgy of jubilation they had after Heligman’s letter on Friday that the SLPP’s hands are in this latest attempt to smear the name of the President, the Vice-President and the country. In their never-ending and unbridled and blind determination to smear the President’s good name, the SLPP thought they had hit the jackpot and they did not even leave it to one’s imagination to conjecture how much they had been celebrating in their corner . All the pro-SLPP newspapers and online forums jumped on the story like it was gospel truth and started building electioneering campaign stuff out of it.
The SLPP were so happy that the neurotic former Secretary General of the party, Mr. Jacob Jusu Saffa , could not help exposing his immaturity, naivety and lack of respect for fair play on Sunday when he sent out a chain letter to all the media houses and selected recipients gloating about Heiligman’s letter and claiming that more facts about President Koroma’s dealings with Heiligman would soon come out. He was responding to a post made by Dr. Sylvia Blyden , the Publisher of Awareness Times, who had started poking holes into the Heiligman letter .This was what J.J. Saffa, one of the stakeholders of Sierra Leone’s politics , wrote : ” Sylvia, no grammer can paint EBK clean. He is ‘guilty’ of aiding and abetting to defraud an investor. He collected monies from sources he failed to disclosed contrary to law. Many of such corrupt conducts will soon be out.” Note that he was already imputing wrongdoing on President Koroma without first ascertaining the veracity of the allegations. This is the dangerous, dirty and stupid politics being played by the SLPP. J.J. “Blood ” did not find out whether Heiligman was saying the truth and already he was accusing the President of aiding and abetting and asserting that more facts are coming out. When the SLPP behave like this, why would people not accuse them of being behind these gutter tactics to needlessly smear the name of a good man ?
And ironically, J.J. Saffa made this statement hours after some concerned Sierra Leoneans, including the Publisher of this newspaper, had already called Mr.Heiligman and he had started exonerating the President and lamenting that he did wrong by mentioning him in his letter. And today, Mr. Heiligman himself was discredited by his business colleagues who indicated that he was not speaking on their behalf at all. If J.J Blood had taken his time to call the American businessman as was done by many sensible and mature people, he would have known that Heiligman had corrected himself and exonerated the President and this could have saved him from the embarrassment he now faces. And what will J.J. say now that even Heiligman’s business associates have denounced him and disassociated themselves from him.
J.J. Blood is one of the stakeholders in Sierra Leone.We expect him to be more responsible , mature, nation-focussed and fair, not to be so irresponsible and foolish to take anything from the gutters and run away with it to make mountains out of molehills. Shame on him and SLPP zealots.
Let this lesson be learned by the SLPP . They will never succeed to besmear the name of President Ernest Koroma and this APC Government. Every plot, every scheme and every machination will end in shame like this because President Koroma is a clean man and God knows that he is working hard and conscientiously to make Sierra Leone a better place for us , our childen and generations yet unborn. God will never allow the unrighteous to exact evil on him because he is a righteous, sincere, honest and hardworking person.
As in the past , their jubilation has quickly evaporated and turned to shame as Mr. Heligman has made it very clear that he wronged the President and had no business mentioning him in his letter. But will the SLPP ever learn ? The answer is a big, fat NO ! ! ! Even as we are writing this, they are back in the sewers scouring for dirt to pin on the President, Vice-President and other hardworking members of the government. What a depraved political party ! !