Sierra Leone Telegraph: 29 November 2023:
Two senior members of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations – Ranking Member James E. Risch and Chairman Christopher Coons, have written a damning letter to the Board of the US Millenium Challenge Corporation expressing their deep concern at the US government’s decision to even consider Sierra Leone’s eligibility for Compact Funding under the leadership of President Julius Maada Bio.
The letter clearly shows the deep distrust and contempt that members of the US Foreign Relations Committee now have for Maada Bio, who has proven time and again that he is unfit for the presidency of Sierra Leone with his appalling human rights record, disregard for democracy and civil liberty.
Warning against the MCC doing business with rogue leaders like Maada Bio – a retired military Junta leader who in 1992 unlawfully executed 29 citizens of Sierra Leone, and has since killed over 200 more since taking over power in 2018; the Senators said:
“Democracy faces serious challenges in Africa and around the globe. The recent surge in coups and contraction of the democratic spaces globally may have narrowed the pool of potential MCC partners but that does not mean the MCC should lower its standards.”
The MCC had earmarked a whopping $450 million for President Bio’s government, but this funding has been put on hold following the blatant rigging of general and presidential election results by President Bio and his hired Chief Electoral Commissioner in June 2023.
The main opposition APC and election observers are calling for the results of the elections to be published but President Bio and the electoral commission have refused. What have they got to hide, if not their callous disrespect for democracy.
You can read the Senators’ letter here:
People who make up foreign relations committees in Western capitals usually know more about a country than its people through thorough intelligence networks which are as sophisticated as they are incomprehensible. To my understanding the most deadly spies are handled by people who even those who are members of the spy agency don’t know, they don’t even have an office.
So for members of the US Foreign Relations Committee to form such a denigrating opinion of Bio means that they know more than we do,and these are people that both The State Department and the man at the White House listened to with intense attention. Quite simply, Bio can forget about improved relations between his government and the Americans, which puts the MCC funds (half a billion dollars) on indefinite hold.
It’s worth mentioning also that Bio’s questionable diplomatic skills must have angered the Americans, such as when he declared, while in the heart of Washington, that elections in Sierra Leone were not any different from those in the US. That was a huge blunder of monumental proportions.
Maada Bio is a ruthless dictator who lacks respect for human rights, and he is willing to kill any person he perceived a strong opponent against his diabolical desire to hold on to power by any means. He created the drama to panic the population with his Kamajo military force to grip on to power with his illegitimate presidency.so, no serious and democratic government will have trust in him at all.