By Tabora Bojang
Following his declining of the position of chairman at PDOIS’s congress, veteran politician Sidia Jatta has said he has groomed many young minds in the party who can take up from him, adding, it is “only bad farmers who plant seeds and ignore them after they germinate.”
The former parliamentarian was elected unopposed to serve as new chairman of PDOIS in absentia, but when he entered the hall, he mounted the podium and politely declined the offer in a moving statement to the delegates.
“For 40 years, we have been sowing seeds in this country and those seeds have germinated and are growing. Now I feel it is my responsibility to go and see how those seeds are growing for me to help mold them to maturity,” Jatta said.
He said his calling now is not the chairmanship of the party somewhere else, where there are weaknesses. “I want to join the rank and file of the party to work. And I can only do that when I am out of office,” Jatta stated.
He clarified that declining his election as chairman does not mean he is retiring from the party. “I don’t want anybody to misinterpret me as they have misinterpreted Halifa Sallah,” he said.
But I am not retiring because I am not sick. I am not physically weak. I am mentally alert and intellectually capable to assume the responsibilities that this party requires me to assume. But I am declining your nomination and election as chairman for a work that I am assigning myself to do in the party,” he begged the delegates.
