By Isaac Massaquoi
I still can’t say with any amount of belief that the outcome of the Presidential Debate of 2007 influenced the choices Sierra Leoneans made at the polls. As a member of the committee that organised the debate, I would have loved to say that the huge swing away from the SLPP to Charles Margai’s PMDC was as a result of how the politicians performed at that debate at Hotel Lagoonda. But that would certainly be the highest point of dishonesty. The fact is this: By the time of that debate, all the voters were now in their party trenches, waiting for voting day. Even the elites in Freetown who one would naturally expect to make up their minds out of events like that, were already decided. The situation hasn’t changed significantly five years on, so why bother to have another debate?
Setting up the debate in 2007 was a difficult job. The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists had no money and was very careful about who it collaborated with for the project. There was a good degree of cynicism about the intentions of SLAJ, led at the time by the combative Standard Times editor, Philip Neville. It was clear from the outset that Solomon Berewa would boycott the debate and there was very little local knowledge about organising such debates. The first attempt in 1996 was an absolute damp squib. For us on the committee, there was nothing to learn from.
When our committee eventually linked up with the National Democratic Institute, NDI, they brought a lot of experience and indeed some cash to add on to money we managed to get from a few individuals and groups including the West Africa Civil Society Forum, WACSOF. WACSOF had promised to fund the debate but as the date approached, Dr. Richard Konteh who is now Minister of Trade, who was very enthusiastic about the debate, was sacked as WACSOF coordinator under circumstances that are still not properly explained.
The debate went ahead anyway at Lagoonda Hotel in the Aberdeen district of Freetown under the chairmanship of the BBC’s Hassan Arouni. I wasn’t taking notes on the night so I will not attempt to give a detailed account of what transpired. I remember that at some point, we lost control of the main entrance so that people who remained at the gates even when we told them to leave because they didn’t have invitation papers, eventually entered that hall and they were mostly die-hard partisans whose intention was to make their opponents uncomfortable with disapproving undertones and applauding every statement their leader made – just what we wanted to avoid in an event as serious as a presidential debate.
The other problem we created for ourselves was that we decided to call all party leaders to take part in the debate. So we had about eight politicians on stage all seeking to make an impression on those of us in the room and radio and TV audiences around the country. It was totally impossible for Hassan Arouni to seek vital clarifications from waffling politicians or put supplementary questions where appropriate. In terms of substance, a lot of people left the room that night in the same position they were before they came to the debate.
As expected, Solomon Berewa of the SLPP failed to show up. The PMDC leader Charles Margai used the opportunity to demonstrate to his new allies in the APC how committed his party was to the coalition. Charles Margai directed all his fire at Mr. Berewa while at the same time heaping praises on the APC leader, Ernest Bai Koroma who struggled within the first fifteen minutes of the debate to compose himself in front of the nationwide audience. I was told by Berewa aides as we packed up to leave Lagoonda that it was precisely for that reason that the SLPP leader refused to attend. He just didn’t want to have to deal with the APC and its PMDC ally and the other five mushrooming parties who collectively wouldn’t get 10% of the vote in the election that followed.
The media weren’t properly catered for. No proper analysis of the issues followed the debate, resulting in the people being completely unable to get information from the debate in small bits, properly explained to help them make up their minds about which party will do well with mining, agriculture, education, sports and so on.
This state of affairs allowed politicians to knowingly make wild and baseless allegations that proved to be false the very next day. For example, one politician accused the ruling party at the time of having sent thugs to attack a religious radio station in Freetown to silence them for their “critical reporting”. BBN radio is a Christian station that is not into sharp political analysis, so why would any government try to attack them? It turned out that those who attacked the station were common criminals who were rounded up by the police and prosecuted. To this day, no media house has raised it with that politician whose stock in trade is making inflammatory statements every time TV cameras and microphones are around.
I am told that a steering committee for this year’s debate is holding meetings now trying to plan the event. I am sure they have no illusions about the enormity of the task facing them. First of all the Steering Committee has to be clear that not all registered political parties will be represented at this year’s debate – no political correctness please. The idea that every registered political party should present a speaker at the debate, is wrong.
Only those parties that have a realistic chance of taking State House or making a good showing in the parliamentary election should be in the debate. And let’s not pretend every political party can win 2012. We will miss a few very bright people in the small parties, yes, but it really makes no sense to me, to try to listen to everybody and end up with very little substance or the irrelevant partisan sniping we have had to endure in the last one year.
I could clearly hear you telling me I am simply trying to limit the debate to the traditional parties. May be you are right, but just look back at those parties of 2007 and tell me where the following parties are today in terms of membership and activities, PLP, UNPP, CPP, PDP and so on. All they do is get their registration papers in place just before an election and collect whatever benefit is available from the UN and other bodies and as soon as the results are announced, they close down for another four years. For how long are we going to pretend we don’t know this?
You will notice that I haven’t said anything about the Vice Presidential debate which had taken place a few days earlier. That was an organisational disaster. Miatta Conference hall, a short distance away from the APC office was packed with partisans and other uninvited people who are now professional gate-crashers to any program at that place. Sam Sumana, the young, handsome guy with the American accent and “plenty money” as was freely said on the streets then, was making his first major public appearance after his appointment as running-mate to Ernest Koroma leader of an increasingly confident APC. And and that alone was a crowd-puller.
I still remember how two guys who ended up in Koroma’s cabinet went up and down the stage passing papers to Sam-Sumana apparently to help. That was totally wrong and we were powerless to lay down the rules in such a charged atmosphere.
Sam did his best but he was shy and he tried unnecessarily hard to keep to the script and we didn’t get the passion and warmth from the man, like the one he displayed at the closing ceremony of the Sierra Leone Conference on Transformation and Development in January this year. May be we expected too much from a rookie politician, thrust into the headlamps of national publicity by his appointment to such a position.
The SLPP’s Momodu Koroma, was very much at home with the issues. We expected no less from him after many years in government but very few people wanted to listen to him. He wasn’t liked that much even within his own party. At some point, some in the crowd disrupted his flow as he made some good points about his government. A senior police officer, still serving, made some very rude remarks about Koroma just behind me. I turned and looked at him in a way to let him know his words were unbecoming of a policeman especially of his rank. He was embarrassed and spent the next ten minutes distracting me from the debate with his attempt to stop me from publishing his comment. He is one of those very partisan cops well known to the media and I am sure he only got caught up in the moment when he made those unguarded comments.
Things were not looking good for the ruling party already. When the results started coming in during the first round, I made a few calls around the country to get the national picture. Umaru Fofana was on his BBC assignment in Bo town in the south. He told me “things aren’t looking good for the ruling party here tonight.” Saying that to anybody at the time was a clear sign that Sierra Leone was on the brink of a major change of personnel at least.
Even today, I am asking myself this question: Of what value were any of the two debates to the decision that brought Koroma to State House. No doubt, Koroma and his party recovered fantastically well from their devastating defeat at the hands of Tejan Kabbah in 2002. His personal popularity was really high. But the ruling party simply imploded. The disparate groups of hardcore SLPP, moderate Kabbahists, greedy contract-seeking defectors from other parties, ambitious young professionals eager to go into governance and those minority tribes that experienced frontline politics for the first time under Kabbah, couldn’t hold together once Berewa was made leader. Berewa was a hard politician and many didn’t believe he had the necessary political savvy to hold the party together.
The debates only put us among other nations that have followed a tradition so well established in America. But it will take several more debates and better organisation to produce anything I will call a worthy presidential debate. The up-coming one will be crucial.
