Tony Blair to set up shop in Guinea
Tony Blair and Alpha Conde (President of Guinea)
Tony Blair and Alpha Conde (President of Guinea)
The Telegraph reports Tony Blair has been invited by the government of Guinea to set up his ever growing African Government Initiative (AGI) in Conakry. This means that Mr. Blair and ‘the Tony Blair Office’ will be adding one more African nation to thier list of presidential advisees. Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda had already signed up.
The Tony Blair Office in Sierra Leone sits inside State House in the president’s office. What is it they do? Well, they supposedly provide advisory services ranging from daily administration, economic policy, to foreign investment.
Set up as a charity, the Office doesn’t actually give any funds, or undertake development work, instead they do the very heavy lifting of advising. The offices are staffed by foreign expatriates are paid for by the charity.
Mr Blair uses his business and diplomatic relations to lobby, and advocate for deals in countries likes Sierra Leone and Guinea. The folks at the Tony Blair Office want you to believe that all this is done for altruistic reasons, and not for profit.
Can you imagine ex UN Secretary General Kofi Annan setting up offices inside 10 Downing Street or at the White House?
How much sovereignty can countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and now Guinea claim to have if Tony Blair or foreigners are whispering “advise” on how they should be running their countries. Furthermore, if you need a foreigner to come and sit inside your office to tell you how to run it then perhaps you should not be president.
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EBK is a humanbeing, who is acting with magnanimity and gratefullness to Tony Blair. Tony single-handedly brought peace to Sierra Leone and his leverage has helped brought economic investments into our beloved country. His name should be sung in praise and should be allowewed to set office anywhere in Sierra Leone, evidently for the mutual benefits of Tony and “Mama Salone”
Tony is just a commission agent and is milking Sierra Leone – left and right and now he will do the same to Guinea and Liberia.He did not bring any peace to Sierra Leone and it was UN Peacekeepers who did it and UN spent over 3 billion dollars to bring peace in Sierra Leone
I entirely agree with you, Jean. I wonder what spurious reasons he gave to President Conde of Guinea to gain a foothold in their country. In our case we seem to be paying a heavy price because his father was a part time lecturer at FBC once. I deplore the lack of any public debate on this deep intrusion into our so-called Democracy, and the lack of general awareness of the activities of the AGI. I maintain that we owe the creation of our new office of Chief Executive to the President to Blair’s influence; he used a similar appointment in Alastair Campbell to change the Labour Party to New Labour and to rule outside cabinet constraints. I have little doubt we shall suffer the same from this move whether we end up with any dodgy dossiers, or not. The countries of Southern Africa who resisted this scam were right to do so, and must wonder what gives in Sierra Leone. If we are seriously saying that we cannot do business unless Blair puts in a word for us then he should hold a higher rank in our Governance than the Paramount Chief that he is.