By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
Those who have encountered the research of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, must have come across the idiom: “A Freudian slip”, or the word “Parapraxis”. Basically, “A Freudian slip, or Parapraxis, is a verbal or memory mistake that is believed to be linked to the unconscious mind. These slips supposedly reveal secret thoughts and feelings that people hold”.
Now enter President Julius Maada Bio and First Lady Fatima Bio. Since the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) came to power in April 2018 to date, the Bios have been looking at the country through the lens of the George W. Bush-ian philosophy of “either you are for us or against us”. And true to this noticeable thinking, the First Gentleman and Lady of the Republic of Sierra Leone have made public statements which have given away their secret thoughts and feelings towards Sierra Leoneans who are not members of the SLPP.
Just last Tuesday (5 April 2022), whilst meeting with village headmen at State House in Freetown, President Bio twice referred to members of the main opposition, the All People’s Congress (APC), as “the other people.” This comes few months after Madam Fatima Bio had publicly stated at a party function that, “those who are not SLPP supporters are not true Sierra Leoneans.”
Those two statements, from President Bio and his wife, do not only defeat the so-called cardinal philosophy of the SLPP’s “One Country, One People” but show the disrespect and scorn which they have for APC supporters and other Sierra Leoneans who are truly apolitical. By calling members of the main opposition party “the other people,” the Head of State is conjecturing that Sierra Leone can be one country when it is only peopled by SLPP supporters. So, “the other people” are just substandard second class citizens. That’s the inferred logic! Or should I say fallacious fallacy?
This is shockingly shocking considering the fact that in his first address to the House of Parliament on Thursday 10 May 2018, President Bio had stated in line 125 that, “In the last ten years, the building blocks of national cohesion and the feeling of belonging of all citizens have gravely crumbled….” But sadly and ironically, just four years of the SLPP rule, majority of Sierra Leoneans feel more ostracized today than they were five years ago. The “feeling of belonging” to a nation called Sierra Leone, by majority of Sierra Leoneans, has “gravely crumbled” because of the seemingly supremacist policy being implemented by the Bio-led administration.
And President Bio, who promised “to promote unity and national cohesion” during his parliamentary address on 10 May 2018, is now using divisive language to create more schisms amongst Sierra Leoneans. In his statement of 5 April 2022, he deliberately said, “the other people have lied to you to vote for colours. But even when that has happened, that colour has not made your lives or your communities better”. And as if to sadistically twist the dagger in the wound, he added that, “…we will completely refurbish Makeni Government hospital (that the other people did not bother to renovate)… What I am simply saying is that if we can do this in the Makeni area where we know how people will vote…[against the SLPP in the 2023 general elections].” Here, again, the President makes a Freudian slip! Now, I’m beginning to appreciate the seemingly hidden reason why people were killed in Makeni during the Generator Riot of July 2020. This statement might also explain why, according to the “Bombali Human Rights Committee Report-April 2021”, over a year now “the families of those that died still feel aggrieved about the… lack of accountability and justice.”
And I will stretch the hypothesis of “the other people” who are “not true Sierra Leoneans” further. It is these same secret thoughts and feelings that the President and First Lady might have held that could have framed the Commander-in-Chief’s address of 8 May 2020 in which he called APC supporters “terrorists”! And to show how the President felt, and still feels, about “the other people”, he even engaged in a sort of “Long Bench” or “Ataya Base” chatter when he stated that, “Like terrorists elsewhere… known agents and associates of the All People’s Congress party have publicly predicted the precise date, target, and nature of the attacks….”
But when known agents and associates of the SLPP like Austin Johnny, “Arata”, and the Resident Minister North Abu Abu threatened to unleash pogroms on members of the APC; President Bio kept mum. And he is still keeping mum on issues that have the proclivity of making the state ungovernable. His loud-sounding silence seems to be conveying the message that his administration believes that what is good for the goose should not be good for the gander.
And what is, also, noticeably palpable about the First Family is the frightful fact that they appear to be using the same divide and rule tactic to crumble “the building blocks” of their own party. Now the JMB [Julius Maada Bio] Women’s Wing has eclipsed the SLPP National Women’s Wing; while the First Lady seems to have usurped the duties of the SLPP National Women’s Leader, the Publicity Secretary and Organizing Secretary combine. But that’s the SLPP’s cup of tea; so nothing should concern a vulture with an Afro-comb.
As a result of categorizing Sierra Leoneans into the “true Sierra Leoneans” versus “the other people”; President Bio and his wife might be creating the same antecedents, which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report says led to the eleven years civil war. These were “greed, corruption and bad governance [which] led to institutional collapse, through the weakening of the Army, the Police, the Judiciary and the Civil Service” (according to the “Bombali Human Rights Committee Report-April 2021). And the status quo appears to be a sort of déjà vu!
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian with a Ghanaian proverb that says, “If the elders leave you a legacy of dignified language, you do not abandon it and speak childish language”. Those who are not dead to language can decipher that proverb.
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