By Isaac Massaquoi
On November 17 2012 Sierra Leone will be transformed into the world’s largest prison yard - a prison yard in which people will only be allowed to meet in certain clearly designated places, perform one
specific function within a certain time frame, under rules set by a select few, actively supervised by anxious and suspicious-looking young men and women.
The inmates of this prison called Sierra Leoneans will not be allowed to move their cars around unless those movements are approved by a few people and the vehicles are marked in such a way that they are easily identified a mile away. By any serious reckoning, this is the most wide-ranging power any National Security body has given itself since the restoration of democratic governance to Sierra Leone in 1996.
It’s an issue picked up by one of the most respected election monitoring bodies in the world, The Carter Center. In the pre-election statement, the Center says it is “aware of the ONS’s plans to impose a comprehensive ban on vehicular movement on election day, a preventive measure widely supported by political parties and presidential candidates.” The statement notes further that “while The Carter Center acknowledges the authorities’ concern about political violence on polling day, the ban contradicts international obligations and Sierra Leone’s own constitution, ...As this vehicular movement ban is based on the consent of major stakeholders in response to specific concerns, it could be an appropriate step. However, the Center hopes that such ban will not be needed in future elections, as full democratic participation requires full freedom of movement.”
I have italicised the last sentence to demonstrate that for me this is the most important issue. It is only because I want to keep this sentence in context that I have bothered to quote the other lines running down to where my argument is leading. I don’t think The Carter Center should even try to reason with the security concerns that our politicians and ONS people are talking about. All their arguments regarding why they think people must remain within walking distance of their homes on voting day are completely flawed. They are all contributing to scare-mongering about the potential for political violence and what to do about it that has now become a kind of cottage industry for many civil society groups to access funds from unsuspecting donors.
I hope you don’t get me wrong, I also believe that if political leaders do not deal with the propensity of their militants to fight over the simplest of issues and the police fail to act when they need to against anyone breaking the law, we could face sporadic acts of violence across the country. But is that why the ONS is planning to stop vehicular traffic on November 17?
For the Carter Center to argue that our politicians “widely” support the ban doesn’t even start. A good many of these politicians only represent themselves and their political parties. The people don’t
know them. Here we vote for parties so all the candidates concern themselves with, is getting the party symbol. Measures such as these create unnecessary tension around a process that Senegal went through without such grievous intrusion into the private lives of their citizens. So just because we want to elect our leaders, the country should become a ghost town; government and private sector people lose billions of leones as a result of the uncertainty we create by pretending the clouds will fall on Sierra Leone on November 17.
In another corner we have civil society groups placing radio jingles urging the nation to vote “peacefully” because we are the “same people”. I get really fed up with this kind of patronising behaviour. If radio stations weren’t making money out of this process, I would have called on them to stop running these badly-produced jingles that cause so much panic and alarm.
I can’t understand why the ONS is seeking to restrict our civil liberties in this way this year. In 2007 I was living in the west of Freetown. Because of the same tension building and noises about the threat of violence, I decided not to drive around on polling day. I boarded a taxi and went around seven polling stations in the central and northern parts of Freetown with ease. It was only around 4:30pm that I returned to my polling station at collegiate school, voted within five minutes and returned home.
I saw many other vehicles – private and commercial – with people moving around doing things completely unrelated to the elections. Keep in mind the fact that the PMDC had told its supporters to stay
at polling stations until the votes were counted and the results declared. Their argument at the time was that it was part of their effort to stop the ruling party from manipulating the results in their favour. Yes there was fear that the SLPP would rig the election and stay in power but wasn’t it too presumptuous of the PMDC that their party operatives would effectively monitor all the processes leading to the release of the final result and so keep it above board? Only this week, we heard Solomon Berewa grumbling about the cancelation of votes to deny him the presidency.
While doing graduate studies in the UK I had the opportunity to vote in that country’s election in 2001. I suspect some will accuse me of setting the bar too high by attempting to compare Sierra Leone to the UK in terms of how their election is organised. That will be a legitimate line of attack and I will concede some ground even before the attack is launched.
Our former Colonial Masters have a very long experience with democracy and their systems have evolved over many years. They are still tidying it up all the time. So to that extent, we can’t really compare our country to theirs.
But let me now make the point I really want to make about what I observed more than a decade ago. I have to be honest because I can’t remember ever registering to vote in the way we do in Sierra Leone. I came from school one evening to find election papers in my pigeon hole. I found a map directing me to my polling station along Grays-Inn road and photographs of the parliamentary candidates of the
various parties. I enquired later and was told that the names of all residents of that hostel, who are citizens of the Commonwealth, were passed on to the authorities by the owners of the facility, the
Goodenough Trust.
On voting day I went to the polling station at 11:30 am on my way to class and within five minutes, the process was complete for me. Don’t ask me how I voted as I suspect you want to do now. I left Sierra
Leone a week or so after Operation Barras in which British Special Forces lifted the siege on Freetown and starvation in the provinces. It was impossible not to vote for the Labour Party of Tony Blair. In my constituency, the Labour candidate was Frank Dobson. I voted for him.
As I left the station, about two young people who were apparently collecting data for exit polls, asked an elderly Indian lady how she had voted. “I voted Labour!” She replied and went her way. It was
my turn and I replied in the same way.
In the early hours of the next day the results were declared and Blair made the short journey to see the Queen and his new government was ready to go. There wasn’t much doubt about Blair wining and that’s not because the influential Sun newspaper had proclaimed on its front page, “It’s in the bag Tony. The Conservative Party under William Hague was weak and shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin was unable to convince the British people the nation’s economy would be in good hands under the them.
Throughout the campaign period, I saw no political rallies on the streets of London. Just who will stay out of work or school to join a political rally? There were political meetings but I saw them only on TV. When the result was declared, I saw no unnecessary triumphalism that re-created a scene like that of Julius Caesar returning to Rome after conquering foreign territory.
In Sierra Leone, politicians organise carnivals which they call campaign rallies on some of the worst roads in the world. They disrupt work and business and in some situations, ordinary commuters are attacked and valuable items like money and jewellery are stolen from them by some of the men in the rallies. Pathetic!
Our politicians are happy to have rallies daily but they can’t have a decent debate that is targeted and substantial. No holiday was declared. Life carried on as usual.
This attempt by the ONS to restrict our civil liberties in this way just because of an election that will in fact change nothing is wrong and should be withdrawn now. We don’t need to have practiced democracy for two hundred years to deny anarchists the opportunity to make our elections a blood sport instead of a civilised contest for power. Let’s all shoot down this ONS arrogance now.
(c) Politico 08/11/12
