By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
In his first five years at State House, things went from bad to worse due to President Julius Maada Bio’s knack for looking for scapegoats even in situations where only common sense would have prevailed. And also, his penchant for crying wolf whenever he saw a painted “okuru” dog was one of the reasons why Sierra Leone is today in a state of accelerated decline.
Now things are going from worse to worse as it seems that everything, and anything, President Bio touches turns into moulds. He appears to have lacked the Midas touch which would have endeared him to ordinary Sierra Leoneans except for opinionated Paopaists who are equally being pilloried by the current economic situation in the country but are too ashamed to accept the reality of the realities.
Our Head of State appears to be a sort of pariah among his peers that he now seems so desperate for recognition that he will not hesitate to accept a congratulatory message from the Association of Sierra Leonean Lepers (even if such an association doesn’t exist!). I heard, from the grapevine, that the Association of “Kush” Consumers is planning to pay him a courtesy visit at State House soon to congratulate him for his “Mohamed Konneh victory”.
Probably, just a probability, the Abacha Streeters might have provoked the Fountain of Honour’s wrath simply because they are yet to troupe to State House to congratulate him for the June 24 “Mohamed Konneh victory”! And for such an unpardonably unpardonable sin; their stalls have to be destroyed at Abacha Street, in central Freetown, to sanitize a city which has been made chaotic by what seems to be state-sponsored Paopa-ian lawlessness!
President Bio is now trying to legitimize his cloudy legitimacy as the European Union (EU), the Carter Centre, the Bureau of African Affairs, the National Democratic Institute, (NDI) the National Election Watch (NEW), and even the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone (CCSL) have all raised concerns about his legitimate legitimacy. They have expressed grave concerns about the dishonest and shamefully shameful manner in which the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) handed down political power to him in a calabash despite the tallying processes of the final results were laden with lots of glaring “statistical inaccuracies”!
And of all the institutions, or organizations, which have laid bare what appears to be the daylight theft of the June 24 elections, the CCSL has been undiplomatically undiplomatic. Unlike the tongue-in-cheek Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL); CCSL believes that there were “overcast clouds” over the results [that controversially give President Bio a second bite at the national cake] which needed to be cleared. It notes further that, “the failure of the ECSL officials to answer questions regarding the procedure at the tallying centers especially with regard to the results form which were flagged for review and why results were published when the tallying was not complete merely heightened the lack of transparency of the [entire] process.”
That’s also is in sync with the position of the All People’s Congress (APC) which believes that President Bio’s legitimacy is still questionable “given the glaring irregularities and violations of established electoral procedures” which were deliberately overlooked by the Chief Returning Officer, Mohamed Konneh, who declared that President Bio was the first person to breast the tape.
Now, our Commander-in-Chief’s title appears to be hanging “loose about him like a giant’s robe/Upon a dwarfish thief” (to quote Angus in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”). Just after the multi-tier elections, and in recent times, the gait, the mannerism, and the faltering speeches of President Bio convey an atmosphere of lack of self-confidence in a man who once bestrode “the narrow world like a Colossus” (to quote Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”). The Paopa-ian ambiance, the opinionated arrogance with which he called members of the APC “terrorists” and “insurrectionists”, and the machoness of a retired Brigadier are all gone! In their places now appear to be a suppressed nervousness of someone who is not so sure of his legitimacy.
And it appears as if the metaphor of “a dwarfish thief” might have led the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to have had a rethink of giving helping hand to Sierra Leone in the near future. That metaphor might have led to Sierra Leone’s Donor Partners to be thinking of withholding their aids, grants, and loans until the “stolen” robe is returned to its rightful owner (s). It might have been that metaphor which might have led to some Advanced Lovers of Democracy to be thinking of slamming sanctions and travelling bans on the Bio-led administration and some of the shakers and movers of that administration. And it might have been the metaphor of “a dwarfish thief” that might have led AirFrance to have indefinitely suspended flights to Sierra Leone.
While he is trying to legitimize his legitimacy by clutching every diplomatic straw or life-jacket thrown at him; President Bio is also grappling with the reality that his government is still unable to magic-wand the economy as local foodstuffs are graduating from having high price tags to non-availability in the markets.
And too bad he has sacked the specialist in “bread and butter issues”, (“Pepe” Economist) Jacob Jusu Saffa aka JJ Blood, who was so knowledgeable in those issues that in 2018 he promised to solve them in six months and also promised in 2023 to do same in three months. But poor JJ Blood, his blood may be running cold whenever he thinks of how he could have solved the current “bread and butter issues” in three months.
And things are getting from worse to worse so much so that the current Minister of Finance, Sheku Ahmed Fantamadi Bangura, confessed in the well of Parliament yesterday (Monday 31 July 2023), during the presentation of the “Supplementary Government Budget”, that the Sierra Leone economy continues to grapple with “…rising inflation, exchange rate depreciation, and higher debt levels”.
And he continued the grim picture thus: “…the current trend in domestic revenue collection, though improving is insufficient to fully finance the ongoing and emerging expenditure pressures. During the first six months of the year, some revenue streams did not perform as expected due to sluggish domestic economic activities, low purchasing power and weak tax compliance….”
So, with the above grim economic pictures of the country, coupled with a President who appears to be still having a “legitimacy crisis”, the worse of the worse is yet to come!
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