By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
What Sierra Leone needs, at present, is a unifying leader who has vast experience in financial management, both local and international, to fix the country’s economy and concentrate on the provision of social services aimed at alleviating the plight of the suffering masses. That leader is Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara.
Dr Samura Kamara’s landslide victory of 1,382 valid votes at the All People’s Congress (APC) National Delegates’ Conference on Monday this week is an indication that a prophet can be honoured both in his home and outside it. By overwhelmingly electing Dr Kamara as their presidential candidate for the June 24 election, the APC delegates have sent a clear message that Sierra Leone is now ready for a leader who knows how to find his way through, or around, economic labyrinths whenever they present themselves.
No sane Sierra Leonean can deny the factual fact that Sierra Leone now needs a swamp cleaner (to borrow and One Drop-nize Donald Trump’s phraseology) who is capable of cleaning the mess which President Julius Maada Bio and his toadies have dumped the country in. Even the most opinionated fools, in the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), know that when it comes to solving the “bread and butter issues”, President Bio and his economic team are known to have behaved, and still behaving, like a group of below-average Arts students who are given Additional Mathematics problems to solve!
Close to five years now, President Bio and his SLPP government have brought untold hardships to ordinary Sierra Leoneans through half-assed economic policies. They have sliced the country into two halves of “Us” and “Them” through what appears to be arrogant tribal chauvinism. They have represented, and still representing, all what is bad and despicable about Sierra Leonean politics. And President Bio and his SLPP government have engaged in local “peace keeping missions”, in the opposition north-western strongholds, which appear to make the activities of the far-right paramilitary groups of El Salvador of old look like dress rehearsals!
And the economic situation in Sierra Leone is as grim as a gloomy cloud—thanks to the ineptitude of successive SLPP Finance Ministers and a stick-in-the-mud out-of-reality Governor at the Bank of Sierra Leone. But with an experienced economist like Dr Samura Kamara, who has been to the economic mountaintop and back unscathed, ordinary Sierra Leoneans will be assured of not only having bread with butter on their dining tables in the mornings but will also have rice and stew in the afternoons and evenings.
What is of utmost concern to Dr Samura Kamara, the APC presidential candidate who is likely to be the next President of Sierra Leone after June 24 this year, is how to solve the “bread and butter issues” in the country. During his declaration for the flagbearership of the APC in Makeni city on Sunday 12 February 2023, he noted that, “As we address the “bread and butter issues” in the most immediate term, we must also comprehensively articulate the underlying factors or structural deficits that contribute to a weak economy, namely low productivity across growth sectors; low productivity of our population; weak supportive infrastructures (roads, electricity, water); weak private sector, low domestic revenue mobilization; high levels of public borrowing and public spending; weak governance systems; and high vulnerability to environmental and climate change challenges….”
The above shows that Dr Samura Kamara is not one of those half-baked SLPP grandstanding economists, or “Drunkardnomists” if you like, who have been carrying out the tricks of their trade as if they bought their degrees at the Dominion University! Unlike the current crop of SLPP economic advisers, the APC presidential candidate is capable of translating practicable economic policies into doables which will cushion the hardships which the SLPP government has foisted on ordinary Sierra Leoneans through half-assed economic policies.
Dr Samura Kamara has proven, in successive governments in Sierra Leone, that he knows how to work, or walk, his talks. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) knows his worth; the World Bank trusts him, and the Commonwealth of Nations is still missing his expertise. And majority of Sierra Leoneans seem determined, this time, not to make the mistake they made in 2018 when they were hoodwinked into voting someone who was out of job for over two decades.
As Dr Samura Kamara’s march to State House appears to be now a sort of a fait accompli; he knows the challenges which Sierra Leone is currently facing and how to go around them. During his declaration ceremony to lead the APC in this year’s June Presidential Election, he laid bare what a Samura Kamara presidency would look like: “…for the next five years as president of an APC-led Government, my priority is to take and build back our country, unite our people and move speedily to alleviate the suffering of our people, salvage the economy which has collapsed under the Bio-led SLPP Government, and put the country on the path to national sustainable development trajectory….”
And that sustainable development trajectory of a would-be Samura Kamara presidency will revolve around uniting Sierra Leone, after the seemingly calibrated divide-and-rule policy of the Bio-led administration, and ending the current suffering of majority of ordinary Sierra Leoneans through prudent and workable economic policies. To say that Dr Samura Kamara is the man of the moment will be a watered-down understatement; he is the man of and for the future!
Sierra Leone will, definitely, move from the current economic stagnation to prosperity if Dr Samura Kamara is voted as Head of State in June this year. According to him, “…our political and economic scenes are bankrupt and visibly mired in what looks increasingly like terminal impotence. History will judge the Maada Bio-led SLPP Government’s mantra of “New Direction” and legacy for the way they have run the country in…the last five years given that in 2018, they inherited a vibrant democracy with abundant resources. The depth of the anguish is etched on the faces of the beleaguered masses who are pessimistic about the future, angry about the present and desperate for the… APC to champion their cause[s]. That is the cry of the suffering masses….”
That sums up the past, the present, and the future of the “land that we love”. The current SLPP government is suffering from “terminal impotence” which has led to Sierra Leone being confined in a foster home with her “anguished” children “pessimistic about the future” but desperately waiting for the “APC to champion their cause”. And that cause will be championed by Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara who has already started the march to State House.
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