By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
When the history of how Sierra Leonean passports found their way into the hands of some Hong Kong citizens would be written; the names of President Julius Maada Bio and current Speaker of Parliament, Dr Abass Chernor Bundu, might be found in the Introduction and Bibliography. But, surprisingly, both are contrasts in traits and intellects.
It was fate that brought them together in the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) military junta of the 1990s. Fate has brought them together again as key personalities in the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). The sharp contrast is that whilst President Bio embarrassingly stutters in his speeches even though he doesn’t have Moses’ tongue (pardon my biblical allusion here); Dr Bundu reads his with the flawlessness of someone who is carefully educated. And whereas President Bio’s speeches appear to be hurriedly and thoughtlessly written; Dr Bundu’s are craftily crafted with the craftsmanship of a polished craftsman.
That brings me to the two speeches, by President Bio and Dr Bundu, delivered last Friday at State House during the launching of the Government White Paper on the Constitutional Review Process. Taking a closer look at the President’s speech, all what one sees are political points-scoring and the usual drab high-sounding nothing. The first gaffe is where he references “…the ten-year civil war”. I have always been wondering whether our Commander-in-Chief reads his speeches aloud in front of a mirror before he reads them in public. Because if former President Ahmad Tejan Kabba declared the “war don don” in 2002, which started in 1991, then common sense should have told President Bio that the rebel war officially took eleven years.
And President Bio appears to have cultivated the knack for creating laughter where laughter could be considered a sign of bad taste. Knowing the high level of corruption which is now permeating the entire SLPP-led government, as highlighted in the 2020 Audit Report by Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL), I don’t think the President would have the audacity to say, “…our sustained and much-lauded fight against corruption….” What lauded fight? A fight in which “one of the receipts of US$156,113.73 for hotel accommodation dated 18th September 2021[that was submitted by the Office of the President in relation to President Bio’s endless overseas travels] was marred by discrepancies, inaccuracies and inconsistencies.…”? Mr President, you can tell that to the Marines because the “Paopagandists” and “drunkardnomists” won’t believe you. Even your anti-corruption czar, Francis Ben Kaifala, knows that the so-called “sustained and much-lauded fight against corruption….” is just a high-sounding charade!
And it is insultingly insulting for the President to talk about the decade preceding 2018 during which he claimed they “…witnessed unconstitutional intrusions on matters of the rule of law and on the protection and promotion of rights and liberties guaranteed in our constitution.” Should I remind him that it is under his watchful watch that both the Clerk and Speaker of Parliament were imposed with disregard for parliamentary procedures? Must he be reminded that it is under his rule that the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) invaded the well of parliament and brutally threw out Members of Parliament of the All People’s Congress (APC) in scenes that were reminiscent of how the Gestapo used to invade Jewish homes in Nazi Germany? Is he feigning forgetfulness that it is under his reign that 10 MPs from the APC were removed from parliament by judicial sleight of gavel so as to unduly give his party a slight majority in the House? It seems President Bio has the uncanny habit of waking sleeping dogs!
And it would be regarded as hypocritical for President Bio to bemoan the “countless breaches, infractions, and abuses…by President Koroma and his All People’s Congress including the sacking of an elected Vice-President of our nation”. What will he say about his government prematurely sackings of citizens with tenured jobs? What about the suspension of the Auditor General, whose only crime is to assist him in his so-called fight against corruption? At times, the manner in which the President comments on national issues gives me the feeling that he is not in sync with the realties in Sierra Leone.
After President Bio breast-beats himself, gives thumb-ups to his hangers-on, and creates the feel-good aura of his presidency; Dr Abass Chernor Bundu euphemistically tells him that all his bragging about “The full White Paper as accepted is rational and more extensive than the 2017 White Paper…” might eventually come to naught. Because with the current composition of the House of Parliament, according to Dr Bundu, “…except for Bills for the alteration of mundane ordinary provisions of the Constitution in which all the major parties represented in Parliament have a shared interest, all other Bills face a tall order in the present Hung Fifth Parliament and it is well-nigh impossible to predict the outcome with any degree of certainty. For example, if there is a Government Bill to amend the Constitution, even if it is able to attract all 58 votes of the SLPP, all 14 votes of the Paramount Chiefs, all 8 votes of the C4C, all 4 votes of the NGC and all 3 votes of the Independent Members, it would still require 9 votes from the APC to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority. In these circumstances I can only express my utmost best wishes to any person desirous of passing a constitutional amendment in this Fifth Hung Parliament of the Second Republic particularly in these most exacting times.”
That’s a euphemistic way of telling President Bio that he is talking jazz. And Dr Bundu goes further by appearing to insinuate that constitutional matters are not for PhD dropouts. And he goes didactic: “…The framers of the 1991 Constitution were, in my humble opinion, quite deliberate and calculated when they made extraordinarily stringent conditions for the alteration of the provisions of the Constitution…if any alteration or repeal…didn’t first obtain the authorisation of Parliament….They deemed it to be inimical to the interests of the people of Sierra Leone to make it easy for anyone to tinker with the sanctity and sacred nature of our Constitution. Strong reasons must be given for any alteration of the Constitution and they must not only be reasonable, sound and powerful but overwhelmingly so if not absolutely necessary. In other words, it was their way of admonishing future generations to make haste slowly in any attempt to introduce alterations to that sacred document”.
And Dr Abass Bundu twists the dagger in the President’s wounds (figuratively) by creating a sort of scenario in which a professor is using fine words to tell a sheep-headed student that he is below average intelligence. So, I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with Dr Bundu’s closing that “…the challenges faced by our nation today are as alive as they were in 2008 and 2017 and they behove us all to maintain for now our unflinching fidelity to the 1991 Constitution and allow it to grow and mature to full blossom, except for a few ordinary mundane provisions able to galvanise a common interest for change amongst all the parties represented in the current Fifth Parliament. The rest can wait for more propitious circumstances to prevail”.
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