By Umaru Fofana
“Game Change” is the title of a 2012 HBO political movie directed by Jay Roach. I watched it two weeks ago on an Emirates flight to the Middle East. I would usually sleep on a plane but I managed to stay up to watch the movie twice on the 8-hour flight from Accra to Dubai because of the political poignancy before catching a short sleep.
It is based on the real life situation of the US presidential election of 2008 with a focus on the role of the controversial presidential running mate of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin. Many things impress me about the movie but also the subject matter.
In it, when a journalist asks Palin about a scandal that has been lurking in relation to her tenure as Governor of Alaska, she says she has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
The McCain campaign’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, grows incensed by this response of Palin’s. He excoriates her behind the scene saying she aught not to have responded in that manner because it is not true that she has been cleared. It is interesting tha Palin and McCain say they will not watch the movie, but Schmidt has hailed it calling its account, correct. This should mean I can rely on the backstage wrangling that takes place in the movie as a representation of what did happen during the 2008 campaign.
The point I want to make here and the parallel I am drawing is the value of the value of truth in especially politics. Sadly in Sierra Leone, truth-telling is the exception rather than the rule. Lies galore! How many times do we not hear government officials and opposition politicians blatantly telling lies with reckless abandon and without any consequence?
In public relations, one of the cardinal principles is to not tell a lie. When you do not want to admit to something wrong or bad, you decline to comment or you try to deflect the answer. Otherwise when it is discovered that what you had said was a lie, your credibility is dented.
This brings me to the BBC interview on Focus on Africa with Julius Maada Bio, presidential challenger of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party. While he tried to make a few good points about the situation back home, he derailed somewhat by telling what clearly was not correct. It is a common thing in Sierra Leonean politics, especially lately, that instead of politicians and their supporters concentrating on articulating what they or their candidates stand for, they spend a lot of time making their opponents look bad, most times falsely.
One good thing about the stewardship of the current administration that no one should try to take away is the very impressive road projects, which have seen roads built or being built throughout the country. From Freetown to Kono to Kambia to Kailahun. So for Mr Bio to have reduced the significance of the current road projects to something “3…kilometers” value and to amplify that carried out by the former government led by his SLPP party can at the very least be described as disingenuous.
I start to wonder whether there is any Steve Schmidt to tell Bio that that was wrong of him to have said and to dissuade him from making any such faux pas in the future. Politics is not about lying against each other. Politics is not always about personalizing attacks or smearing the other. If I were Bio I would have lauded the road projects currently being undertaken by the president I want to unseat, and concentrated on the economic and other social challenges the country is faced at present. And there are a good number of them.
I receive phone calls almost every day from very respectable citizens pleading with me to bail them out, financially. There is hardly a moment we don’t get stopped by people in the streets to beg us to provide them with literally what to eat. But roadwork is one that is thriving – and probably one of the reasons for the harsh economic reality, which the government is probably not honest enough to admit to.
How about highlighting the mining lease agreements, which seem to be being approved with speed at the pace of light. Or may be Bio’s SLPP party has no mortal high ground to raise that. After all they are also in Parliament and they are sucked in it – sacrificing the country’s future with contracts that leave a lot to be desired. Cutting short their recess to approve a mining contract as if to say the country was at war.
But no one speaks sweepingly ill of the ongoing road projects if they are honest with themselves. I went to Goderich over the weekend and it is amazing the pace of the roadwork there – not just the main road. There is some work going on even with feeder roads. Those alone are over ten kilometres – at least seven kilometres more than what Bio stated.
I had to drive through the Kingtom police barracks yesterday because the cemetery road to the Apex School where I was going to drop my son was blocked by a broken vehicle. Impressive how far the roadwork has gone to ring round Kingtom with a smooth drive. The last time I had gone to the barracks was sometime last year. It was to jog. And I hated everything in me that we would allow the road to one of our main police barracks to look like the mining pits of Kono or Tongo. I stopped jogging there and reverted in stead to the . You can imagine how that would feel for a car or even a Poda Poda.
I have said this before, and I am proud to say it again, that if every government before now had prioritized the roadwork just half the way the current administration has done, the economic and social implications would have been immeasurable. Much as the government cannot see that as the be-all and end-all of the essence of their stewardship, the opposition must desist from rubbishing it - all in the name of lying to score cheap political points by two sets of politicians who more often than not irritate more than soothe.
The APC and the SLPP, the only two political parties to rule our country since independence, must change tact – and immediately too. The messages they send most times are complete falsehood and do not portend for the next generation who grow up learning that lying is trendy. It breeds criminality in our society and it engenders dishonesty in governance. Either way – or even both ways – it reverses our progress as a nation even if a few people benefit as a result. And the better option should be for the country to progress, which will bring us all along – rather than a few to thrive while the nation bleeds. So Mr Bio you got it wrong on this…and you blew it in blue. Wondering if you were angry when you spoke.
