By Mabinty M. Kamara
Two political parties the NGC and Unity Party have in a debate organized by the Sierra Eye magazine and the Institute of Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice kicked against the idea of non-partisan local council election across the country referring to it as a political ploy by the current government to strengthen their hold on power.
According to the debate moderator Umaru Fofana the 2020 National Decentralization Policy was now with the law officers department and will soon be tabled in parliament.
Lawrence Lahai Leema, in his capacity as National Publicity Secretary of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) spoke in favour of the motion while Dr. Dennis Bright, Chairman of the National Grand Coalition (NGC) and Femi Claudius Cole, leader of the Unity Party spoke against the motion.
In his opening statement, Lahai Lawrence Leema whose debate partner, Prince Coker of the All Political Parties Association (APPA) was absent said his party believes in the will of the people as enshrined in the 1991 of Sierra Leone. He said removing political parties from Local government will engender development at the local level and foster peace.
But his opponent, Dr. Bright contested this claim, saying that the idea had little or nothing to do with the development of communities and that it’s all about power and control. He said: “I will tell you that the reason why the ruling party, SLPP wants to introduce this at this particular time is just to gain total control and power at all levels of governance, local, parliamentary and presidential. As we have already seen the efforts made by the SLPP even at the parliament to gain total control and authority and now they are advancing towards the local level.”
Femi Claudius Cole of Unity Party said a nonpartisan local council election “is bad for the development of communities as it will lead to chaos and leave the communities vulnerable to some rogue individuals who might use money and influence to gain power against the will of the people.”
She said political parties support and protect their candidates against intimidation, and violence and help them financially in times of election, something she said many independent candidates especially women will not be able to easily pull through without the support of a strong force.
She argued that “Allowing political parties to run in local elections will not hinder community development what will hinder and does hinder community development, is not giving them their budgeted funds, not allowing them to be innovative. Taking away their rights to hire, to interview their core staff, those are the things that hinder community development. If the existing is not a problem, why on earth are we trying to fix it?”
SLPP spokesman Leema noted that extensive consultations were done across the country in developing the decentralization policy and that the people were in favour of a nonpartisan local election.
During contributions from the floor, Marcella Sesay of the National Elections Watch who took part in those consultations said it would be good to see the final report from those sessions to determine whether support for nonpartisan local election was overwhelming as argued by Leema. She refused to be drawn on her observations on the position of the people during those consultations.
The Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki Sawyer said the problem of local councils is that they lack the necessary financial and administrative support from the central government to carry out their work.
Dr. Isaac Massaquoi, lecturer at Fourah Bay College noted that the internal democratic practices of the political parties were faulty and good candidates have been frustrated after failing to get the backing of the big parties. He added that independent candidates have won parliamentary elections after they were denied symbols by their parties against the will of the people.
This is the seventh in the series of such debates.
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