For those untainted by ethnic, religious and socio-political colouration, and who can discern between reason and sentiment, peace and war, love and hate, civility and incivility, our democracy has become a metaphor for misrule and impurity.
Politically corrupt individuals as well as double-speaking, desperate and morally bankrupt leaders and politicians are not only dictating the pace of our future, they are also charting the path and dragging us down the road.
We are living in really interesting times as those involved in the several dastard acts that characterize our national existence fail to realize that if you scuttle a system for personal or group ambition, it becomes a collective tragedy .
Contrary to the belief being mostly peddled, we are stunted not by the lack of resources to propel our development, but by mis-governance, bad leadership and mindless looting.
We long behind the rest of the world simply because of our hypocrisy and the collective failure to protect our liberties and social and political institutions.
In addition, we have allowed the nation to be driven into the pits. As if that is not bad enough, our leaders are now pushing us under the bus as they compel us to follow their inglorious personal agenda that have very little to contribute to the national development and the aspirations of the majority.
The political animals in human skin, who have tasted blood, have gone savage and can no longer be satiated by the little we have to offer.
They are ferociously hungry for power and thirst for the throne of their ancestors. There is fire on the mountain of our animal farm where those in power are determine to ride on the back of a tiger at all costs.
The oppressive ruling class, enthroning regional inequalities, mass poverty, Kleptomania and criminal underdevelopment and which thirst for power, is hell-bent on keeping the pigsty open.
Neck-deep in the sewage of corruption and greed, our political class, at the unwitting behest of a lazy followership, do not seek to enrich our collective world but to impoverish the many and turn our society to a junkyard of shattered dreams.
Yet it is obvious that our current drift replicates that same hopelessly selfish political behaviour and economic recklessness that eventually led us to disaster.
If where we are today as a nation – unsecured, financially broke and lacking knowledge and competence in a dynamic knowledge world – is not a hole, then what is it if I may ask?
If the rise of political lying and the tendency to put popularity before principles are not prime examples of how to reinforce the effect of moral decadence on the values of a society, then can someone show me the way?
Where thieves feel valued and recognized in the context of societal mores and mentality, no level of leadership or institutional enhancement will work.
We currently look like a multi-leaking balloon in a carton network-fountain; going round in circles with the same infected water and corroded particles.
The paradox is this: the more that we, the citizens, see politics as a soap opera because of the crass display of our leaders, rather than a process of uplifting the nation and its people, the more we’ll continue to create the platform for mediocrity and sleepily embrace the manifest nonsense of Kleptomania and impunity as a basis of governance.
I have repeatedly maintained that you cannot give what you don’t have and presently, our so called leadership doesn’t have it in them to give us the honest desire and drive to lead as well as change the instruments of the sleaziest sort of political brigandage.
Once our political class lost its conscience, sense of decency, decorum, shame and self-respect, Sierra Leone became doomed.
The moment national vision became blurred and lost in the foggy atmosphere of the wanton greed of our infantile, psychopathic and contemptible leadership, our existence began spiraling downwards.
Encouraged by our silence and tacit endorsement, our politicians lost all respect for everything decent as they began to defecate on the country and its people.
They turned the country into their own private tree-house and dared us to do our worst. We succumbed to their vice-like grip and have remained shackled ever since.
‘’ Ow for do?’’.
It is our apathy that has condoned their abuse and irresponsibility and today, wherever you are in the world the impunity of our leaders, as well as our cluelessness as a nation and a people, continue to dog and define who we are.
Other nationals come in and slap us in the face and yet all we do is open our doors further and ask them to sit at the throne of our empire. They cart away our best and give us pittance in returns; still we are delighted and honoured that they find our home worthy of being the source of their own enrichment.
The solution to our problems of lawlessness, impunity and the aftershave of political greed infecting the air, as well as the lack of properly defined national priorities which the lack of focus has turned into an albatross, lies in visionary leadership and strong institutions.
Definitely, not in propaganda. Nor the astute manipulation of public opinion. And certainly, not in the unabashed twisting and fiddling of the voice of a largely ignorant and hysterical majority.
We have to stop being blinded by the display of the political dark arts and recognise the vile orgy of greed and maladministration by this and past regimes which have brought us this far.
There’s also a desperate need for the harmonization of our collective will, not only to tackle the increasing primitive impulsion of our leaders but also to protect the sanctity of our nations from the grip of the minute group hell-bent on privatizing the country and holding the rest of us to ransom as they bid to protect their vested interests.
However, the significant planks of achieving this goal, which I highlighted earlier, are hollow and ineffective without some form of social revolution and evolution, which involves the forging of a collective attitude of hostility, to the kind of society that currently exists in Sierra Leone.
It is left to us to renew our character so that an end is put to the arid and meaningless existence which has continued to produce an awful stench of fear of the future.
This is not the time for a pity party where political affiliation and tribalism assume priority over national emergency.
It is the moment for politics of passion on behalf of our nation. It is a time to open our eyes.
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