By Isaac Massaquoi
President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria is surely now completely embarrassed by the goings-on in our political parties since the day they each received their share of the US$ 1 million he gave them. It’s been breathless – starting with the main opposition SLPP, the UDM, the NDA and the RUFP, accusations of corruption and forgery of bank documents and financial records have been flying all over the place leaving the ordinary people of Sierra Leone asking the inevitable question: how would these parties have managed state money had they been elected.
I haven’t heard from the ruling party as yet on this issue but I understand why. The counterparts of those shouting about money in the opposition either have access to money from other sources or are too scared about the consequences of attempting to disgrace the great party on the pages of newspapers and on radio programs like their colleagues in the opposition. They are all the same people. I believe this in as much the same way as I believe that wickedness never lasts.
I make bold to say that what Sierra Leoneans are witnessing today goes to the heart of what the nation’s politics is all about.
My understanding is that the Nigerian leader gave the money to our political parties to help them put themselves together again after the most expensive and divisive political campaign ever in Sierra Leone, in terms of their physical presence on the ground across the country as a party and also to answer the livelihood question for some party people so that they concentrate on doing the work of the opposition in the winner-takes-all political situation in which we find ourselves.
I have to now tell President Goodluck that his gift has produced the completely opposite result. The struggle for his money has destroyed political careers and parties forever; relationships have been damaged beyond repairs and the party or parties that will manage to stay afloat in some form after whatever settlements they reach among themselves in the end will never be the same again. Goodluck Jonathan must already have regretted being so generous.
I have listened to many of the politicians from the parties involved in this money Wahala and read newspaper accounts of what has been happening since the Nigerian largesse landed in Freetown. It’s just beyond what any ordinary Sierra Leonean expected from political parties making a genuine push for power.
I know that our parties are not run by angels whom we assume don’t make mistakes but the whole affair has been shameful. When the Nigerian High Commission in Freetown compiles this dossier of disgrace and sends it back home, policy makers will be alarmed at the way our politicians scramble and disgrace themselves for such small money. The Nigerian parliament would need no persuading to conclude that their tax payers’ money should never have been used to directly fund political parties in Sierra Leone. If the money in question came from Jonathan’s pocket, he may well have given up on directly supporting our parties in the future.
Here’s what I think this money ought to been spent on: Almost all the parties that received the money are in debt arising from the last elections, may be even before that. They still have to pay rents on hurriedly-arranged housing they used as party offices in and out of Freetown to meet PPRC requirements for certification to operate as national parties.
Some parties still have to pay for campaign materials like T-shirts, caps, billboards and posters, car rentals and even fuel. I have met party agents who are still waiting for their fees for serving their parties on Election Day as polling agent.
It is easy to experience how a good many of our parties have become briefcase political organisations, in other words they exist only on papers stacked in the briefcases of their chairmen and flag-bearers. Visit their offices even in big cities and you will find them locked 24 hours a day just like insolvent institutions closed down by a court order. Well some of them truly are.
One of the parties that contested the last elections located their party office in the crucial district of Kono in a disused petrol station with its name brightly inscribed in their party colours.
I visited Kono about three times in the weeks leading up to the elections and I made it a point to drive by the place at different times during those visits. Not once was that office open.
The party leader publicly endorsed president Koroma before the elections and is now roaming Freetown asking for help with this and that. Some senior people in his party told me just last week that they had no idea Goodluck Jonathan gave political parties money. I told them how much money was lodged in their bank account, according to PPRC records. Let the process of holding leaders to account begin.
And I don’t know how the PPRC does its monitoring and by which standards/. So looking from outside, I find it extremely difficult to understand how some of these parties managed to go through the screening process and get on the ballot in the first place.
I also don’t know if the PPRC monitoring takes place only a few weeks to an election when parties hurriedly put up the façade of an office. I ask because the people of this country must be able to know the result of periodic reviews of the parties. Such reviews will help the people decided the state of readiness of these parties for governance. Because we allow them to take chances at capturing state power from such disorganised foundations, they give the impression this is not a serious country.
Indeed the candidate of the PDP went on radio and told the whole country that running for the presidency was like a gamble. Using his own logic, running for the presidency in Sierra Leone is equivalent to buying a lottery ticket and hoping that the machine will throw out your number during the evening draw.
By his own logic too, presidential candidates don’t need any structural preparation or thinking about the modern day task of running a government just like the man playing lottery. All the man aims for is getting his hands on money and living the big life happily ever after. The records are clear that many lottery winners have ended life where they started off – in poverty. Some have committed suicide while others have become the faces of campaigns against dependence on lottery at the expense of hard work.
The presidency of even Guinea Bissau is more difficult to operate than selling cocaine to the European Union and the United States. The last thing a country like Sierra Leone needs is ending up with a president who entered State House like a lottery winner.
During the campaign, one so-called flag-bearer told a group of journalists what, to me, makes nonsense of this business of pretending all groups registered by the PPRC are political parties in the sense in which established democracies understand them.
The journalists wanted to find out from him why his party was unable to put up candidates in all constituencies and wards throughout Sierra Leone. Surprisingly one or two of the “big” parties were also guilty of this inability to be truly national.
The flag-bearer told us he wouldn’t spend money campaigning across the country or even putting up candidates in constituencies outside Freetown because it didn’t make much sense to him. I left the place thinking his frankness must not be rewarded with favourable coverage.
A few days later, he was on TV vehemently disagreeing with a journalist who put it to him that he was only in the race to collect UN money with no hope of winning a single constituency or ward. I waited for him to repeat what he had told us about his political chances but he refused to go that far. Then I realised he was on TV where for the most part, politicians engage in mindless grandstanding. The man and his party failed to get even one percent of the vote. He has since returned to his little corner with his one man show and Goodluck Jonathan’s money in his pocket.
May be Goodluck Jonathan should have set up some foundation to administer this money in much the same way the NDI, for example, operates. Senior party officials could have been trained in disciplines like party organisation and grassroots mobilisation, running an opposition party, financial management and so on in some of the best institutions around the world.
This will appear patronising but even settling the rents and other utility bills for the buildings they used as offices, paying their young party agents and keeping some form of administration in place between elections could have been handled by that foundation working with the relevant party officials. The point is throwing such bundles of cash on some parties here in their present form, is like deliberately sowing seeds of discord that would eventually destroy them.
Sierra Leoneans are quite used to receiving gifts from Nigeria. It’s not much use trying to list them down or quantify them in monetary terms. Nigeria helped significantly to make the elections possible, but Jonathan’s support to the parties – post-elections – has exposed serious weakness in some of the social clubs we call political parties. The only thing this country gained from the whole affair is that what we knew all along has been re-confirmed - Money is at the heart of Sierra Leone politics. It has never been about service to the masses.
