Opinion

Med Sesay Blasts John Leigh

14 June 2006 at 12:24 | 1058 views

As a decent citizen, I refuse to condescend to John Leigh’s current lows and therefore has no intention of using vulgarities, slang, and krio in this piece since I am better educated than John Leigh and more comfortable in the Queen’s language than this self proclaimed educated AMERICAN or lest I forget, he denounced it for diplomatic assignment and currently wallowing in the state of unemployment, precipitated by the traumatic consequences of his untimely, and seemingly hasty sacking by the Kabbah Government. Since the Makeni convention where John Leigh’s disgraceful disappointment was symbolized by his infamous picture displayed like a tottering façade, on the front pages of most tabloids in Sierra Leone, this academic midget as depicted in his writings full of krio and slangy slurs, portrays all the trappings of a person struggling for survival and would stop at nothing to satisfy his selfish ends even if that means cursing people and bungling in obscenities with people young enough to be his children.

The source of my piece titled “How corrupt is Solomon Berewa”? Published in the Cocorioko of June 9th 2006, was unambiguously referenced. My caption was not a statement but a question but Leigh is too uneducated to know these simple grammatical rules of writing. Needless to waste time here on semantics and syntax or else Leigh will submerge into oblivion. His feelings of grandiosity since the onset of his campaign have been rendered useless by the realities of Sierra Leonean politics. In his seemingly arrogant stature, characterized by hasty and illogical conclusions about others, especially on matters of politics and education, Leigh takes everybody for granted and believes with poignant anxiety that he is better educated than anybody else. Leigh’s claim to academic sophistication is pointless. Who knows who? However, the cliché, empty vessels make the most noise comes into play when one reads John Leigh’s statements.

In the interest of readers, I reproduce verbatim the source of my article from the Patriotic Vanguard. The quote which John Leigh is now denying, reads “He however conceded that government vehicles and drivers paid by the government are used during the tours. Petrol is also bought with money from government coffers”... (Patriotic Vanguard online June 8, 2006).

The language in this quote is unambiguous and I implore readers who follow the news to check the source for that is what intellectuals do. The statement itself is a disgrace to the current SLPP government seeking re-election in 2007.In a typical election year in America or any democratic country, this statement is so important that it should be investigated to bring the government to book for unethical practices in the use of public funds. The fact of the matter is that the SLPP government to which John Leigh is now struggling for belonging has failed the nation. The government lacks accountability as evident in the utilization of public funds and logistics like fuel and vehicles for private and personal aggrandizement as encapsulated in John Leigh’s statement.

The quote could have come as a surprise to Solomon Berewa, who must be thinking twice now about the viability if any, of having a political miscreant like John Leigh, whose immaturity in the game of politics has reduced him to the level of a delinquent whirlwind since the Makeni fiasco. The desperation in his reaction to my piece on Berewa is a testimony to the fact that he was touched by the facts which I never manufactured as he alleges, but got those facts from a source as reliable as the Patriotic Vanguard. The fact that the statement was in quotes makes it clear that it was from another source, not a figment of imagination or fabrication as Leigh makes the case. Leigh’s nakedness in this discourse is self-perpetuating and contradictory, the very image of a man under pressure ‘from above’ to debunk, rebuff or withdraw the statement or save-face a party that is crumbling under the yoke of corruption and ineptitude.

Leigh states “No one knows exactly what weed Mr. Sesay might have been smoking when he lied about my statement and jumped to his erroneous conclusion. Or why Mr. Sesay deliberately refused to disclose that I had reported that Mr. Berewa made it very clear at each stop during his entire tour that he was touring on government business as evidenced by his inaugurating government-built clinics, markets and schools and explaining government’s policies, practices and plans to his audience.
Having said this, I now declare that I never uttered the words ascribed to me and quoted above by Mr.Sesay”

This is desperation and spin at its best. Leigh’s contempt for his compatriots is self evident. Readers could clearly infer from this quote from the Concord times that John Leigh made a political blunder in the first place by making these statements. As promised among others, I cannot react to Leigh’s vacuous statement about weed as I do not even smoke. About why I did not comment on the positive allusions he made to his master, Leigh should realize that readers hate to be bored and a brief , pointed, and well researched article as mine published in cocorioko makes more interesting reading than the lengthy and defensive grammatically bankrupt reactions of John Leigh. One fact that Leigh cannot understand is that nobody hates him not least the writer for his political conviction. Every Sierra Leonean has the right to freedom of association although civil servants are intimidated by Leigh’s bosses. Since his defeat at the SLPP convention in Makeni, Leigh has been on the defensive within and without Sierra Leone. He has been effectively put on a defensive corner by the dynamism of young Sierra Leoneans in and out of the country that one only needs to read the archives of Cocorioko, Awareness times( Leigh’s first enemy after Makeni), Patriotic Vanguard, Concord times, to name a few, to see the litany of obscenities written by the previously misplaced Ambassador. If Kabbah was effective in any decision throughout his tenure as President of Sierra Leone, then that decision was the recall of John Leigh. The appointment as I can discern now from Leigh’s misguided statements and hullabaloos was a misplacement.

Leigh also states “If Mr. Sesay wishes to be genuinely helpful to our country, to which I suspect is what he might be aspiring, I respectfully recommend that he decamps from the notorious Sierra Leone ghetto community of political flunkies in Philadelphia and move on into the American mainstream for a more positive and productive professional exposure. Otherwise, his writings will never reach professional standards and his narrow-mindedness that is based on bogus write-ups, fake quotations, lies, omissions and flunky argumentation will only continue to hold him back”.

I could definitely excuse you on this Mr. Leigh, because the statement is conditional and therefore iffy. For the records, I have always aspired to the progress of Sierra Leone and I will always remain to aspire and render those services that would raise the image of Sierra Leone not for the self but for others. Unlike you who migrated due to the lack of your ability to compete for admission to the prestigious Fourah Bay College, and has never returned home to actually live and work towards nation building, I migrated to the United States by a push factor-the war. Prior to migration, I had made ten years of input as a civil servant and continue to work for Sierra Leone everyday.

Fourah Bay College and Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA/USA) educated, there is no reason for me to be in the ghetto and I know of no ghettos here of the Sierra Leonean community. Sierra Leoneans here are mostly highly educated and gainfully employed in very decent jobs. I entered the American mainstream two months after I arrived in the United States by virtue of my employment status and strong academic background from the citadel of learning (FBC). By American standards, I could conveniently locate myself in the American middle class and by Sierra Leonean standards Upper class. For my age Mr. Leigh, I have already served and will continue to serve Sierra Leone. This explains why our generation will continue to bring your generation-one that is replete with failures into disrepute and come 2007; your octogenarian, hegemonic party will crumble under the canopy and prowess of the new wave of rising Sierra Leoneans like us.

Photo: John Leigh, under attack.

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