By Asmieu Bah
The debate as to whether there should have been a second inaugural ceremony for President Ernest Bai Koroma still rumbles on. Articles have been written on it and arguments advanced for either side of the discourse. For the sake of this piece I will not delve into whether or not the President should have held a second inauguration. That is for another day. But I will attempt to show some grey areas as I witnessed the entire event from start to finish.
It was one full of pump and pageantry at the National Stadium which had been preceded by state banquets for invited guests. Sumptuous food was served. With the leftover given to the downtrodden who managed to sneak into State House or Parliament on the night before.
On the eve of the inauguration, the ambiance especially in Freetown had nothing to show that the country was about to witness an historic event especially when you examine President Koroma’s crowd-pulling rallies and the results of the election which prevented the elections from a runoff. Many people expected the stadium to full to capacity. But that was not to be.
Organisers and other event managers were helter-skelter scratching their heads as to the reason for the low turnout. The President’s arrival had to be shifted by several hours to 1:00 pm – way beyond the stipulated time.
To help grace the occasion, heads of state from other countries were invited, as we were told by the Information Ministry. But to our dismay and embarrassment of the organizer and certainly the president, only the Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirlef was on ground.
A committee had been set up by the Office of the President to organise the event. I wonder what questions the presidency has asked of them for this damp squib. In a nutshell state resources were spent on the inauguration at a time lecturers at Njala University were renewing their industrial action. The President did all he could for the event to be a success.
I arrived at the National Stadium around 8:00 am. Not as a spectator but as a journalist. On arrival I strolled around the stadium – almost all the stands – to look at how the security forces were executing their functions, the important guests that had arrived, as well as listen to some side talks. My findings were not pleasing for an event of such importance.
It has been said time and again that the Sierra Leone Police need some training on how to handle events like international football matches and riots. At the National Stadium the police were very impolite to invitees, especially ordinary citizens who were there to witness the inauguration of a President whom they had stood in long queues for and had given their votes to. It was supposed to have been a day for the common man, just like the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States at which, say historians, the high and low hobnobbed in the White House. Ironically, however, our security forces turned it into hell for the ordinary people. What amazed me was when I saw government ministers being molested when they tried to enter the stadium.
Ambassador Dauda Kamara, who, until just a few weeks ago was Minister of Local Government, together with his wife, was told to use a route other than that which the police had earmarked for foreign guests. If they were trying to screen people the simple question is how come a minister would enter the stadium with a weapon or any other harmful thing to subvert the inauguration. Just too bizarre!
As for the organisers I think they failed to rise up to the challenge, thereby exposing the President to embarrassment or public ridicule. Because of the delay in the arrival of the President, who apparently did not want to enter a half-full or half-empty stadium, some foreign guests had to leave even before His Excellency began his speech.
As for the Master of the Ceremony, Denis Streeter, he did an excellent job to inform us about guests as and when they were coming, unfortunately his co-MC almost reduced the event to a wedding party. The lack of coordination meant that it seemed everybody was in charge. There was no chain of command, and the microphone was free for all. To demonstrate the lack of coordination, Streeter’s co-MC had to ask journalists standing nearby for the name of the Ghanaian Vice President. Was that not something he should have been told by the Foreign Affairs Ministry or the usherettes? The protocol officers at the Foreign Ministry should have known the names of the guests as and when they arrived.
I remember asking a member of the organizing committee for a Press Pass on the eve of the inauguration. All he could say was that they were being prepared. There they were on the day of the event at the National Stadium with hundreds of surplus passes. Poor coordination, poor publicity! They didn’t do their assignment well which begs the question then as to what the money was actually spent on.
Charlatans should not be given such a big responsibility if they cannot perform. Have we forgotten the Independence Anniversary Committee and how they almost messed up leaving the whole celebration in shambles for the emergency rescue operation that was carried out with appointment of Professor Magbele Fyle.
In future such an event should be divorced from party politics and be made into a national event for both the high and the low. After all it is the ordinary people’s votes that lead to State House and Parliament.
Had more than one President attended the inauguration and seen that kind of virtually empty stadium they could have been into asking questions about the resounding victory clinched by the president just three months earlier.
Asmieu Bah is a broadcast journalist working for the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation
