By Umaru Fofana
These days it is not uncommon to hear people expressing fear that there could be a serious threat to the peace and stability of Sierra Leone. They cite the seamless disagreements between the ruling SLPP and the main opposition APC as the basis for such fear – which is more of paranoia methinks. I will talk about that in a moment.
One other thing that has gained currency, emanating from the fact that some people are in the habit of exaggerating everything – good or bad – and making it appear unprecedented – is the fact that many have made the present economic situation seem without precedence. It is bad, bad and bad, no doubt! But it is a déjà vu!
Enter President Koroma
When President Ernest Bai Koroma was elected in 2007, international lenders had just cleaned up our slates. The Paris Club, IMF and World Bank had all just written off our debts under the HIPIC (highly indebted poor countries’ initiative). So the feeling was that the new president would have a smooth sail, not least with the economy.
It is still as fresh on my mind today as it was then, hearing the Minister of Information, Ibrahim Ben Kargbo struggling to both wiggle and wriggle out of incessant and persistent complaints that the economic situation was getting dire.
“We have come to power at the wrong time”, the minister said, citing the global economic meltdown which doubtless was impacting many parts of the globe. Even if some wondered how that global economic crisis could have impacted an economy as meaningless to the world as ours was. But it did affect us albeit negligibly.
“At a time like this when our economy is in serious trouble how do you ask a millionaire why he is visiting your house”, then deputy information minister, Mohamed Daudis Koroma retorted when asked at a press conference why the then Libyan leader Muammar Ghadaffi had surfaced in Sierra Leone apparently without prior notification of the host government. The hope was that he would pump badly needed cash into the economy to save the fledgling administration. Not sure that or what happened.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Sierra Leone (EFSL) issued a statement denouncing the new Koroma administration for the sharp increase in the cost of living and the appointment of “mostly northerners” into public positions.
When I asked him for a response to the EFSL allegations, the straight-talking Daudis – of blessed memory – replied rhetorically thus: “They [northerners] voted for us” so why not appoint mostly them into positions? On the rising cost of living at the time, he blamed it on the tsunami that had wreaked havoc on Asia.
Hardship
In fact there was even a new meaning given to the word HARDHIP shortly after Koroma came to power. The opposition taunted at the time that a ship had berthed at the Govt Wharf called “HARD SHIP” – in apparent reference to the hard times at the time. It took the investment into the iron ore sector to stabilise the economy and create jobs. Even though that investment could have been much better managed to help the country more than it helped a few individuals in power, as well as made more sustainable or longer lasting.
But the jobs started being lost in the twilight of the Koroma presidency as the companies began to fold up or wind down. It will perhaps take the revamping of that sector or the discovery of oil of commercial quantity such as it is in Guyana, to turn things around rapidly under the current president. But even there, if we don’t diversify our economy even the oil will not solve the problems for long. Like the iron ore did to us, Dutch Disease will always hit us like it did the Dutch football team, Ajax, who relied on one tactic that led to their undoing in the Champions’ League this year.
Fear of serious unrest
Now, I was driving from Bo to Freetown just about one year into Koroma’s presidency, when I was called by curious members of the public trying to find out what the president was going to talk about in a much-typed nationwide broadcast. There was a febrile political tension across the country. Those who had just lost power – the SLPP – seemed hell bent on wreaking havoc, at least on the face of it. You got the impression there was a campaign of sabotage. Their party headquarters had been set on fire apparently by supporters of the APC whose party had won. The effect was snowballing.
We stopped at Mile 91 to listen to the broadcast. The address was probably anticlimactic. In a nutshell, the president said that the opposition SLPP should give them a chance to govern the country because when they (SLPP) had won in 1996 and 2002, the APC allowed them to be.
On the 2 April 2009, after a series of negotiations, the two political parties came together to sign a 16-point communiqué under the aegis of the then UN country team head and ERSG, Michael von der Schulenburg. He would much later be declared persona non grata in all but name.
After the signing of the communiqué, President Koroma made a statement in which he said the following, in an apparent reference to the then opposition SLPP party: “…the last three weeks have left me with a mixture of emotions. Disappointment because a minority amongst us seem to believe that civil disorder is a means of resolving their problems; sadness for the damage that the unrest has caused to our reputation around the world…”
He went on: “…we must not be complacent, and must constantly reaffirm our values in order to ensure that [we] triumph over the opportunistic and unpatriotic acts of a small minority of people”.
Sounding relieved though, he said: “But today, we should feel proud! Proud because today we are showing how disputes can be resolved in a peaceful manner, demonstrating our maturity as a democratic nation, when our political parties rise above their grievances to come together behind a common vision of a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Sierra Leone.”
The above gives you an idea of what existed 10 years ago. So there is nothing new for people to believe that they will be fire and brimstone in the country, a disincentive for investment which brings about jobs and growth.
Social media
Agreed that the current tensions seem more palpable in Freetown than they did then, but the reason for that is not because there is more tension or worse things happening. Rather it is because of the advent and popularity of social media, especially WhatsApp. There was no WhatsApp in the world in March – April 2009. The app came into being in May of that year and would not reach Sierra Leone until much later. So through it the fear factor is made to appear worse than it actually is. APC can never encourage its members to embark on civil unrest methinks. There is bound to be intermittent and spontaneous violent confrontations with the security forces depending on events they see as threatening to their political leaders. But that is all. After all that is what the SLPP also did when in the opposition and never embarked on full scale disturbances as it is being touted by some.
There are also other things being talked about now as if they’re unprecedented while in fact they were palpable here then. We had commissions of inquiry then and a transition report had also been released by the Task Force set up by President Koroma. I remember him saying at the time that the Anti Corruption would have a “busy Christmas” because the report was submitted in December of 2007.
There was a travel ban on officials of the Tejan Kabbah administration the implementation of which was led by the then vice president, Samuel Sam-Sumana. So in fact, we have been here before. And dialogue resolved it.
In a nutshell, the core of the whole atmosphere of tension in the country is because members of the former Koroma administration are being held to account. And this is where we should try to fix our broken political system.
The way forward
Sierra Leone lacks a transition law. I found myself struggling to explain to the world why we had to swear in our newly elected president close to midnight on 4 April 2018, inside a hotel. Sort of like an interim prime minister in war-torn Somali. In fact in 2012 when president Koroma was declared the winner the second time, some of us were even late to make it to the swearing-in ceremony even though the election office is so close to State House, the venue for the oath-taking. In other words, our transition is messy in more ways than one. There has to be enough time between declaration of result and swearing-in ceremony to tie up loose ends.
What we should do as a nation is to be serious about fixing our broken system. If the leadership of the Anti-Corruption Commission for most of the years under Koroma had been serious with their job and not having their eye on politics, they would have acted on the many documents including the audit reports which are being tendered before the Commissions of Inquiry. That would have rendered pointless any need for commissions of inquiry. That will end or substantially minimise the need for a Task Force or Government Technical Transition (GTT) report that accompanies every change of government and sends politicians to their trenches.
Our ability as a nation to move forward is to ensure that our transitions are handled with maturity and civility and less acrimony. That can only come about if we build our institutions.
Another source of tension is the job losses or sackings. Again regrettably that happened when Koroma came to power and it is happening now under Bio. Obviously some jobs are bound to be lost. Any new president needs his team to work with. But not every job should be made to be one for the party hounds or presidential loyalists. What I will state for now though is the Human Resource Management Office must ensure that civil servants DO NOT get involved in party politics – overtly or covertly. Otherwise such dismissals will be hard to not happen. President Bio should do all in his power – including defying the hawks in his party – to build a solid foundation for democratic good governance, and peace and stability.
© 2019 Politico Online
