By Umaru Fofana
Sierra Leone is in the doldrums, especially politically speaking. And this is ineluctably having a reverberating effect on the overall impact of the country. The country is led by an unnecessarily large government made up of many clueless people appointed not necessarily from among its best or brightest.
Sierra Leone has an opposition whose leaders are mainly hustlers who are either scavenging for the crumps from the table of those whose hands of those who have something to offer, or they are fighting not for the interest of the people but for the selves. They therefore go to bed with those on whose mattresses they should be putting thorns.
I am still at pains as to how President Ernest Bai Koroma could put the newly retired chief electoral commissioner, Dr Christiana Thorpe in charge of leading the reopening of schools yet leaving in place Minister of Education Dr Minkailu Bah and all the technocrats peopling that ministry.
We all know that Dr Bah’s leadership of the ministry has left education in a sorry state. It has led to mass failures in school, quarrel with especially owners of private schools over which candidates should or should not write the public exams after he changed the rules midstream, and the lack of any clear cut strategy as to what the future of the country’s education will look like. But appointing a super official in the person of Dr Thorpe while Dr Bah is in post weakens a constitutionally constituted provision namely the ministry of education. The fact that the former NEC boss will report directly to the president through a special committee and not to the minister speaks volumes about where real power lies.
The latest appointment and arrangement thereof reads like an encore of how the minister of health was left high and dry after the appointment of Pallo Conteh as head of the reconstituted and renamed National Ebola Response Centre with the mandate to report straight to the president. And this happened just weeks after Dr Abubakarr Fofanah had been appointed minister of health following the abysmal performance of his former boss and predecessor, Miatta Kargbo, who was recycled. Clearly such new structures are tantamount to weakening the authority of people appointed under constitutional provisions. If they are not worthy of it, then sack these ministers. But will you not also blame – albeit perhaps to a lesser degree – the same ministers who prefer to stay in post even if not in post.
And in all this we have so-called leaders of opposition parties who are equally clueless and cannot take a simple position on such issues.
In the run up to the 2012 presidential and general elections we had about a dozen political parties and presidential candidates. They were men who, mostly, simply only wanted to be noticed for financial considerations, positions, or were part of a political scam aimed at making fool and fun of the masses. They simply were adding up the numbers for some game-playing. Otherwise why does the United Democratic Movement (UDM) get any recognition at all if not for this seeming scam and the uselessness of the party that should be in opposition?
Since John Benjamin stepped down as leader of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party – and this is in no way saying he was a good leader in view of how he left his party in sixes and sevens – the SLPP has barely expressed any serious, well thought-out position on issues begging for public attention and alternative views. This huge vacuum has left the party’s last presidential candidate, who by the party’s constitution is just an ordinary member, to attempt to do the obvious.
Clearly Julius Maada Bio, like any other citizen of this country, can express his views on things happening in the country, in as much the same way I am doing now. And doing so may not be as bad for him as it may be for the party which has failed to take a position on the numerous national issues that are being badly handled or not handled at all – they include the further expansion of an already bloated administration and the appointments which sometimes raise more questions than they answer.
Ever since Mitt Romney lost in his bid to become president of the United States one hardly ever hears about him, if at all. The reason Senator John MaCain is still being heard is because he is in Congress. The Republican party – mostly from Congress – is articulating its views of national issues and providing alternative policies. But what has happened to the SLPP in or outside parliament? Failing or failed? This leaves Bio with no option but to cache in.
Whatever has happened to the SLPP is a big disservice to the country and could dent whatever aspirations they may have to succeed a government whose popularity rating has taken a huge beating lately due, mainly, to the bungled response to the Ebola outbreak and the massive corruption that many Sierra Leoneans believe is going on.
The only time you hear from or about the SLPP is either when they are tearing themselves apart or they are being chased by the security agencies for one trumped-up charge or another sometimes involving their own very members or supporters.
The party is not being run as an institution despite being the oldest political grouping in the country. Elected officials are busy siding with one aspirant or another instead of providing a level playing field and working in the interest of all those who may want to lead the party. The leadership does not consistently take position on issues of national import.
This may not be unique to the SLPP – after all there are several other political parties in the country. But we all know why those groups sprouted up. And the main opposition party must be different. Sadly, it is not.
© Politico 10/02/15
