By Isaac Massaquoi
The next time you read this column the outcome of the general and
presidential election would have been known. Or at the very least a
pattern would have emerged directing the nation and the world as to
which way the nation would go in the next five years. It’s a
difficult thing trying to predict the result of an election like
this. What is clear is that the fight will once again come down to
the ruling APC and the main opposition SLPP. Both parties have
dominated politics in Sierra Leone for more than half a century and
they’ve developed strong campaign machinery behind them that is
tried and tested.
Tomorrow
all campaigning will cease to allow the country and its
campaign-weary people to breathe some fresh air. This will go down as
the most expensive election campaign since the restoration of
democracy to Sierra Leone in 1996, probably since elections began in
this country.
The
final event in Freetown is a rally by the main opposition SLPP whose
leader has been all over the place fighting to unseat Ernest Koroma
who has himself campaigned hard across the country despite the
obvious advantages incumbency brings in all elections.
SLPP
operatives want to use this event as a show of strength in a part of
the country that they failed to win in 2007. All pundits appear to be
pointing in the same direction that the SLPP must do extremely well
in Freetown and the outlying areas to stand any chance of winning. We
shall see how they perform on this day.
At
the end of voting on Saturday, the crucial task of holding the
country together begins and the first forty-eight hours after the
elections is a very important period in terms of how people will
react to the results once a pattern begins to emerge as what the
people’s decision is. We have examples in Africa of countries
descending into chaos after elections. Ivory Coast is the most
recent. Today the former president is in jail awaiting trial in the
International Criminal Court (ICC) for the violence that followed his
defeat and his refusal to surrender to the will of his own people.
Kenya
lost more than one thousand of its most vulnerable citizens through
internecine ethnic violence just because political leaders decided
that their own interest was paramount to the stability of their
country. Kenya now has a kind of government they didn’t vote for
and some of their most senior politicians will soon go on trial at
the same ICC.
Angola
is another example. That country conducted elections as a path out of
many years of war. The process failed and the country went straight
back into war that only ended when rebel leader Jonas Savimbi was
killed by Angolan forces.
I
believe that on Friday all politicians, civil society groups and
media should start the process of managing the people’s
expectations regarding the outcome of the elections. I am writing
against the background of a campaign in which the main parties have
told their supporters there will be no run off and that it’s
impossible for them to lose with the big crowds we saw on the streets
of Freetown. Attitudes have hardened and unless the main party
leaders are strong enough to stand up to their supporters and get to
grips with the results, we run the risk of facing serious violence in
Sierra Leone. We have come too far from the days of war and
destruction to even think about violence of any nature. But that is
the situation facing us right now.
When
I say get to grips with the result I mean this: In the case of the
losing party, the leader must accept the result and address his
supporters along those lines and then congratulate the winner. It
sounds difficult after such hard work, expenses and expectation. It
is difficult. The defeated US presidential candidate Mitt Romney was
tired, disappointed and broken when he addressed his supporters after
Obama won the last elections but he did just that. His concern was
his country. In any case, the people of that country will not
tolerate any sore loser attempting to wreck their lives. The people’s
institutions are strong enough and can take decision in their best
interest should things go wrong.
For
the winner, he has a much more difficult job. The way he carries
himself in the first forty-eight hours is crucial. The winner should
by all means enjoy the fact of winning but should avoid triumphalism
at least to the extent that the loser is deprived of his dignity.
In
2007, the offices of the main opposition SLPP were attacked within
hours of the results being declared and that set in motion a chain of
attacks and counter attacks between the two main parties. The whole
business was very counter-productive and it only succeeded in
defining Sierra Leone as an intolerant nation where winners and
losers can’t live together. We can’t afford this in 2012.
The
National Electoral Commission says it needs ten days to produce the
results of the elections. Compared to other African countries, this
time is too much. I know NEC will argue about them wanting to do a
good job and making no costly mistakes. But counting less than three
million votes should definitely not take ten days. The anxiety that
builds up after elections as people await the results could easily
spill over the longer it takes to publish those results. That ten-day
gap could open the process up to all sorts of rumours and
insinuations, even outright lies and claims of rigging. Without an
official reply to that, things could go wrong, very wrong.
The
police are assuring the nation that they are on top of the security
situation and are in fact deploying more personnel across the country
supported by the military. All this sounds good but let’s face the
reality: The police have failed to deal decisively with other acts of
violence preceding the election. Yes they’ve made arrests here and
there; they’ve issued press releases and so on. But political
correctness has marred any attempt to strictly enforce the law. The
police are under enormous pressure from all sides but that’s what
they are trained for. It’s left with them to be honest and serve
the people, not politicians who come and go with every election.
The
authorities have deployed military personnel in aid of the police, an
action that is normally taken under very serious circumstances. I
have no idea which security assessment informed that decision and I
do not intend to quarrel too much with that. As a citizen though, I
don’t like seeing soldiers on our streets doing duties normally
assigned to the police. I have no reason to doubt that the
authorities acted in the best interest of the nation by deploying
those soldiers and I pray the soldiers behave themselves in our
backyards.
The
credibility of this country as a true democracy is on the line. Let’s
go through this process and congratulate ourselves at the end of it
all with smiles.
