At the Raddisson Blu Hotel, over the weekend, flag-bearer for the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) Julius Maada Bio unveiled their development policy called the “New Direction”, a policy aimed at addressing the critical development challenges in the country.
According to the flag-bearer, “New Direction is based on the political ideology of social democracy. This ideology is fundamentally committed to peace, freedom, security, justice, equality, unity and solidarity. It promotes and guarantees political, social and cultural rights of all Sierra Leoneans; entitlement and access to basic necessities of life. The New Direction Social democratic polices aspires to create a just and equal society, which is the only guarantee to avoid another war and instability”.
Bio explained that the “New Direction” serves as the voice “between the current business as usual status quo that has ensure that this great nation is wallowing in poverty, corruption, gross indiscipline, under development and ranked as one of the poorest nation in the world”.
But the “New Direction policies is to change and transform this country for the better through inclusive politics, inclusive economies growth and inclusive development where Sierra Leoneans are given the opportunity to achieve their greatest potential for development. Where efficient political and economic management of the state and natural resources will ensure that we be able as a country to pay and finance all our basic and essential services and invest in our critical infrastructure.”
Bio maintained that in the policy document, his Party has placed job creation at the heart of our development transformation of Sierra Leone. We will invest in massive skills training and development based on simple belief that skills plus jobs is equal to development for all Sierra Leoneans”.
Speaking about the social democratic ideology, he said, this is based on inclusive politics, inclusive economic growth and inclusive development where the benefit of economic growth is distributed to all Sierra Leoneans through the provision of free education, free public health care services, affordable housing, guaranteed access to electricity and water provision”.
This model is strongly based on the conviction of one country, one people and it is by only giving all Sierra Leonean a sense of ownership, inclusive belonging that peace, unity security and development can prevail once more in the country.”
The Chair of the occasion, Jacob Jusu Saffa, said the policy is a new way of approaching the country’s problems. It is an event of the process of writing their manifesto and therefore an opportunity for civil societies, and other organisation to include their contributions.
By Betty Milton
Monday November 20, 2017.
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