Compatriots and Netters:
A quick one from peeper's paradise on this latest rediscovery of "Westminster style democracy." In 1972, I had audience with the late Shaki, regarding the posssible reorganization of the Ministry of External Affairs with particular emphasis on the diplomatic policy planning aspect. I had just graduated with a Master's degree in international relations from the University of Chicago and sold everything I possessed in the U. S just to go home and serve the nation! Shaki was quite blunt about his cabinet and advisers. He lamented finding himself in a situation where the western world was pushing "this system" yet he had to appoint "some fool fool people dem" because of representational concerns, who did not understand the meaning and responsibility involved in practicing the system. It is one thing to adopt the system, he said, but a completely different issue when it comes to practicing it given his domestic reality of ensuring some degree of balance in ethnic representation.
There were quite a few people in his cabinet who were definitely not "fools." But he was equally concerned about the "party" and some of its power brokers who may have constituted a partial group of the "fools" to whom he referred. Sadly, after 1972, Shaki made cabinet choices from among the the so-called intellengtia to replace those "fools" who did not understand the Westminster style democracy; choices that turned out to endow our nation with some of the greatest "fools" in the post-independent history of Sierra Leone. They were supposed to understand. The rest is history. This is just a quick flashback. Incidentally, I chose not to be a fool.
Fraternally,
Cecil Blake
certain positions who did not understand the meaning and implications
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