NEWS reaching Cocorioko states that Julius Maada Bio is all sweat and jittters in Freetown as he desperately fights to get the U.S. Embassy in Freetown to change its decision not to grant him a visa to enter the United States. It is reported that Maada Bio has prevailed on his running mate, Dr. Khadi Sesay to write the Embassy a strongly-worded letter to convince the U.S. Ambassador to prevail on his consular officers to revisit their decision not to allow Mr. Bio to come to America .
MAADA BIO : HE IS MORE CONCERNED WITH PROVING PEOPLE WRONG ABOUT HIS INABILITY TO ENTER THE U.S.
It must be recalled that since he became the presidential candidate for the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP ) , Mr. Bio has tried to visit the U.S. to engage in a series of fund-raising activities but news spread that he was flatly refused on the grounds that he left the U.S. in the early 2000s on voluntary deportation for brutalizing his wife and biting off the ear of her lover , and also because of his terrible human rights records when he was a member of the NPRC Junta in Sierra Leone in the early 1990s. A U.S. Consular officer in Freetown was later quoted by the press as saying that the Embassy does not discuss its visa transactions with the public. This was the first red flag that all was not going well with Bio’s quest to get a U.S. visa.Recently, Maada Bio decided on a new strategy to try to enter the U.S. through the Canadian border but we learnt that he failed too in that endeavour.
Meanwhile, in Freetown, while Bio was wrapping up his visit of the United Kingdom and preparing to enter the U.S. to attend high-profile dinners and fundraising events on his behalf by the SLPP North American Chapter , an official of the U.S.Embassy told the NEWSTIME AFRICA newspaper that Bio had not applied for a U.S. entry visa, contrary to the reports of pro-SLPP newspapers and his supporters in the U.S. and the U.K that he had been given multiple visa to enter the States. The report was a crushing blow to SLPP supporters all over the world who had been misled that their presidential candidate already had the visa. They wondered why Bio had not told them all along that he had still not got the VISA. Embarrassment and humiliation followed when the scheduled dates of the Bio events in the U.S. arrived and the flagbearer was a no-show. It was then that loyalists and lobbyists in the UK and USA decided to have Bio attended a side event of an economic forum in Canada with the hope that he could enter the U.S. from that country. It turned out that it was another failed plan.
Now, the SLPP is fighting desperately to get the U.S. Embassy to revisit the Bio U.S. visa issue on the grounds of the doctrine of the non-interfereance in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation. However, the SLPP has to realize that the dynamics of international relations and diplomacy have changed with respect to the doctrine, which is no longer operational as the UN, the EU and even the African Union ( AU ) no longer consider human rights issues as falling under the purview of INTERNAL AFFAIRS. The establishment of the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) which has extraterritorial jurisdiction over cases of human rights , war crimes and Crimes against humanity in member states undermined the efficacy of the doctrine of non-interferance into the internal affairs of another sovereign country . Indeed, President Obama announced a while ago that anybody guilty of human rights abuses will not be allowed to enter the U.S.
But Maada Bio is not listening. All that matters to him now are his pride and his ego. He is blindly determined to prove the world wrong that he is unable to enter the U.S. Coming to America will not help his failed presidential bid but he is an egoistic man and he has something to prove. The national interest does not matter to him. He must come to the U.S. at all costs.
The ball is now in the court of the U.S. Embassy .It is yet to be seen whether the Embassy will override President Obama and allow a man accused of extrajudicial murder and grave human rights abuses to enter the U.S.