By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
The European Union Election Follow-up Mission has said it on camera. Some diplomats have said it in camera. And the United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Sierra Leone, Dr Babatunde Ahonsi, has concurred both in camera and on camera. But President Julius Maada Bio and his troop of hangers-on appear to be dead to diplomatic-speak; so they are still wallowing in willful ignorance.
And it is that willful ignorance that is making senior members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) to be now playing the proverbial stubborn flies who are destined to be entombed with decomposed corpses! And, from the look of things, it appears as if what members of the Diplomatic Corps in Sierra Leone are seeing whilst sitting down; President Bio and his hangers-on are still not seeing it even when they are now on tip-toes. The point is: the SLPP government will not see the tsunami when it eventually tsunamis!
That the International Community and the main opposition, the All People’s Congress (APC), will not accept anything except free, fair, and credible elections in 2023 is as clear as the endemic corruption which is now drenching the SLPP government. And whilst in his New Year’s message President Bio engages in half-truths and vagueness; Dr Samura Kamara the leading contender for the APC mascot for the 2023 Presidential Election and Dr Babatunde Ahonsi are forthright in theirs.
In his New Year’s message I was expecting our Commander-in-Chief to have addressed that portion in the 2020 Audit Report, by Audit Service Sierra Leone (ASSL), in which it is stated that he allegedly spent “US$352,481 (about Le3.5 billion)” of the tax payers’ money on his “honeymooned” medical adventure to Lebanon. I was also expecting him to have addressed the other section that alleges that “one of the receipts of US$156,113.73 for hotel accommodation dated 18th September 2021[which was submitted by the Office of the President] was marred by discrepancies, inaccuracies and inconsistencies.…” These and other issues of grand corruption in his government, and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)’s repeated cover-ups of those financial rots, are some of the concerns I was expecting President Bio to have addressed like the anti-corruption crusader he is professing to be.
Instead, he goes into other issues with half-truths and vagueness which appear to be insultingly insulting to our collective conscience as a nation. President Bio doesn’t seem to know what is actually going on with his flagship programme, the Free [minus “quality”] Education policy. When it comes to how many children have benefited from his Education policy he could only vaguely say, “In 2021, we kept millions of children in school…” and that “In 2021 we have trained thousands of teachers and education sector workers….” If the Head of State is incapable of giving us the exact figures of the children “kept in schools” and the “teachers and education sector workers” that are being trained; then it will be very difficult for us to believe in what he is saying. For truth goes with facts and figures not guesses!
And for that section where President Bio speaks about “the control [and] effective fight against corruption” and claims that “domestic revenue mobilisation is up, inflation is largely in check, procurement and other financial processes are better monitored, and public-sector salaries are paid regularly each month”; I will safely state here that our President should try his hand in Creative Writing for he seems to have the imaginative flair of a would-be blockbusting author! For this portion of his New Year’s message sounds like fiction, considering the realities on the ground!
But Dr Samura Kamara’s New Year’s message is an antithesis to President Bio’s. In his, he lays bare the fact that the Bio administration has instituted conscious policies that are “generating tribal and regional divide; of an administration anchored on persistent hate, blame and vengeance; of political intimidation, arrests, incarcerations and harassment of opposition members; of deepening state capture of both public institutions and strategic business enterprises; of human rights and constitutional violations; of overzealous police brutality often meted against peaceful demonstrations, and of untold hardship and deteriorating social and economic conditions….”
Unlike President Bio who is vague about “…the misinformation-laden rhetoric of bad politicians….[maybe, he is making indirect reference to his very own Professor Egregious Infractions One Percent]”; Dr Samura Kamara is very clear that “…one political party [meaning the SLPP] cannot use violence and intimidation to suppress or disenfranchise political opponents or of any citizen whatsoever.” And he, therefore, notes that it is “imperative that we create and allow an atmosphere that will ensure free, fair and unpolluted elections in 2022 and 2023”.
That last sentence resonates, or is telepathic, with some sections in the New Year’s message of Dr Babatunde Ahonsi, the United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Sierra Leone. This UN Point Man notes that, “…What Sierra Leone’s key political actors do this year will determine whether the country successfully holds elections in 2023 in a manner that helps to advance the process of democratic consolidation in the ensuing years”. But he seems afraid that “the signals from 2021 were not too encouraging as we saw more evidence of tit-for-tat than give-and-take politics across the landscape to the detriment of accelerated pursuit of the nation’s development priorities….”
Looking at the three New Year’s messages, Dr Ahonsi’s message is a sort of buffer to President Bio and Dr Samura Kamara’s. If the Head of State is “determined to keep our nation on the path of a New Direction” but the leading contender for the 2023 APC Presidential ticket believes that under the New Direction majority of Sierra Leoneans “…have witnessed a deliberate and systematic deterioration and the re-birth of those major factors that were blamed for our 11 years civil conflict…”; then Dr Ahonsi’s closing by borrowing from Sierra Leone’s “National Pledge” is appropriately appropriate.
But with President Bio’s determination to maintain the status quo and Dr Samura Kamara’s vow to “work tirelessly to ensure that our votes…be protected in the 2023 Presidential election”; then Dr Ahonsi’s fear of Sierra Leone’s two main political parties purely functioning “as vehicles for winning elections” is in place. And the unpleasant fact is that SLPP supporters appear to be determined to always use violence to get their way whilst there are now indications that APC supporters have reportedly resolved to react to violence with violence. This could mean that Sierra Leone is, at present, masturbating with caustic soda!
It is on that note that I will end this year’s first One Dropian dropping with an excerpt from the preface of Wole Soyinka’s prison memoir, “The Man Died”, which says, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.” Truly true. But I’m not insinuating anything apocalyptic or being engrossed in wishful-thinking; it just that coming events have ways in casting their shadows.
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