What are laws for, if they cannot be enforced and complied with? Yes you can ask me a hundred fold! You can make a million laws but if the process of putting those laws together was not participative and inclusive, you have started on the path of failure. Again, when those laws are churned out, you need to go back to the citizens and see that they understand them. There and then, the ownership is secured.
Out here, we often tend to blame only the poor attitudinal make-up of the individual and let go those charged with the responsibility of making sure the laws are internalized and complied with.
It is the same erroneous thinking, when most of our compatriots tend to blame the guys around the leaders and exonerate the leaders for bad decisions which they more often than not, make. Now the campaigns for this year’s elections have entered into its second week but the main negative issues we have been praying against like provocations, hate messages and direct attacks, still linger on.
While some parties consciously try to avoid trampling on the rights of other party supporters, some others fan flames of animosities by behaving in manners that show intolerance. It seems everybody wants to manifest a show of strength through the number of supporters that come out each time parties have their turns to campaign. What they fail to realize is that not all those supporters registered and therefore will not vote.
Also, if you are following up political issues over the years, you will agree that the number of people who registered for this year’s elections fall far below expectations, given the almost 100 % increase of the western Rural and Western Area populations combined. When I move around the city, I feel sorry for Mama Salone, because when we talk about illiteracy and ignorance, we are really also referring to those so-called educated guys who over the years have slumped themselves into mediocrity and can no longer analyse anything.
Worse still, this category has further succumbed to illiteracy.
So, it is not just only those who did not go to school. Do you see how deep our problem has become?
So far, I am still to see a real campaign where groups move to strategic points in the city and really articulate their parties’manifesto and appeal to people to vote for the candidates. You see the beauty of democracy is that everybody has only a single vote.
Even the presidential candidates are allowed only one vote! This is why, every vote counts and that every vote should be counted. We have come a long way from the days when ballot boxes were stuffed with ballot papers to ensure the candidate wins. We have come a long way from the days of the marble voting when one person was allowed to literally pour many marbles into a candidate’s box for that candidate to win. We have emerged from those days when candidates will be kidnapped on the night before nominations to prevent him from being nominate, so that the favoured candidate can go unopposed.
Today, in this 21st century, the National Electoral Commission has made us proud by really going by the book and doing not only the right things, but also doing them right; never mind attempts by some people sometimes to flaw their actions. One major negative innovation in this year’s election is the use of vuvuzelas and whistles.
I don’t know whether this is because of the football flavour that has been injectected into the Presidential campaign where the President is referred to as ‘World Best’. Interestingly, the Presidents main challenger is referred to as ‘Liberator’ and also ‘Tormentor’.
So you see in this football contest, everybody is playing interesting wings. Some people are attempting to score and others are attacking and preventing the opponents goals. The only difference here is that one team has to win, no draw is allowed.
The most unsavoury part, is when party supporters sing uncouth and demoralizing diatribes against other parties, like actually abusing their parents. I do not think decent people should embark on using abusive languages as a campaign strategy.
What I have realised is that the bulk of the supporters, who form a sea of colourful masses, do not know much about the manifestoes of the parties they support. So, in actual fact, cannot really sell their parties. For some, it is just like a picnic or call it outing, to show off their ability to hang loose and even sometimes spill over. The sweet side is that apart from deaths with one party during their campaign, we have not heard any serious inter party scuffle. What we need to press on throughout the campain is advocacy. Each party should have an advocacy group to forge tolerance. Sierra Leoneans are really all one. Just the other day I read that 80% of creoles actually had their ancestors from the Mende tribe. This is a research, even though the average Creole will tell you that his roots are from Abeokuta in Nigeria. When I was a kid growing up in my tiny village, my late father used to say that ‘oh the Creoles are enjoying their hot foofoo in Freetown’. This always made me feel a longing to come to Freetown.
This was why when I got to college, I made friends with creoles, Temnes and other tribes, since I knew very little about them except prejudicial derogations here and there as a kid. I think we are now more together as a nation, far better than some 30 to 40 years ago. See the intermarriages and the migrations to various parts of the country. Come on, there is really no tribalism in Sierra Leone. It is only during election time that we hear so much of tribalism.
Our people live in poverty and by extension are encumbered with diseases and ignorance. We can do them a lot of good by trying to improve their lot rather than keeping them in ignorance. We should recognize the fact like accepting that whoever wins the elections, the rest of us will have to be ruled by them. I do not think you will run away to another country, if your party loses. There is hardly any school that has not got different tribes especially those who attended government schools in the 60s, up to the 80s.
Some schools like the great Bo School, took affirmative action to bring about a good mix of the tribes. This is how those who attended Bo School in those days, do speak at least one other language apart from theirs.
The result of this, is a whole lot of northerners who have spent most of their lives in Bo town and even sometimes are refused by their brother in the North.
Our country is too small to think only on tribal and family lines. The campaigns are not meant for various tribes to show their hegemony over others. Nature is so balanced that everyone has a vocation in life. All what we need to do is discover your vocation and live it to the fullest.
Have you discovered yours? My Reverend told me so last Sunday;, a very committed Man of God who overlooked the high standing of his family and the position of his family to join the priesthood. Yes, my Reverend father told me that we should draw a line between predestination and determinism. Predestination means God has designed something good for every person on earth. All good things of course come from God. So, when you go out there and perpetrate lawlessness, you are actually digging you own grave.
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