Ebola is gone by the Grace of God but we still have fragments of Ebola appendages around us that might gather to keep us far from free from other challenges. One of these is the Parliamentary and Local Government elections going on, time and time again. These are distracting us at best from properly planning for a very resilient health system that we all cry for and our children deserve.
The issue of elections has always been like the proverbial tsetse fly on the scrotum. You leave it there, it will suck you dry. You hit it you will crush your testicles. Over the years we have had just too many animosities over bye elections in this country and many people have seen them as ignominious precursors to the general elections. Now tell me, have we ever had any positive outcome to violent acts at our elections and other events in the country? Just check them out? From Bumbuna to Pujehun, from Freetown to Bo. But, of course, we all know how nice our country is, we will all pretend that all’s well. We will hold thousands of crusades and all-night prayers…yet our troubles will continue to torment us. Nobody wants to look at the root causes; we do not dig deeper or act outside the box. Why? Like they say, if you want to have what you have never had before, you have to do what you have never done before. As Sierra Leoneans do we really care?
Just see the feverish way in which we are taking the bye elections. Every other week some dignitary is travelling to areas where the bye elections are taking place. Some go whole two weeks before the elections, wasting government resources; I mean tax payers money all in the name of campaign. Sometimes I wonder whether bye elections need so much campaign. In fact, the last time I checked because of violent outcomes, they had long forbidden any dignitary from travelling to areas where bye elections are due to be held. Again, we have started seen that vulgar display of lavishness with funds. Our laws limit the use of money to influence votes, but we continue to see a brazen violation of this. We have had a history of the misuse of public funds with gross impunity. Let’s go back in history.
I listen quite a lot to Sarcodie’s music and I enjoy when he says: ‘What time is it? What else? Who else? And money, no to problem’. What next for Sierra Leone? We were well on our way to be a democratic success in Africa but it seems the very people supposed to be custodians of our statutory provision are the first to dismantle them. Like Jonathan Balla of the Africa Research Institute once wrote that many problems beset Sierra Leone like corruption, politicized communal identities, youth unemployment, and rising prices. Of course, these have always been there.
In the late 1980s, life expectancy in Sierra Leone was one of the lowest in the world. Infant mortality was amongst the highest. The literacy rate was just 15%. Since 1978, the country had been a one party state up to around 1985. The effects of a collapse in world prices for Sierra Leone’s exports were compounded by decades of economic mismanagement and endemic corruption. Just check out; the two leading parties are responsible for all the agonies the nation has always gone through.
When Sir Albert Margai left office in 1967, after three years as prime minister, he was said to have been worth an estimated US$250m despite receiving an annual salary of just US$4,000. In 1985, when President Siaka Stevens stood down, he is said to have amassed a fortune of US$500m. The Bank of Sierra Leone, in contrast, held US$196,000 in its foreign reserve accounts. Salaries of lower level public officials went unpaid. Hospitals, schools and roads fell into disrepair. In 1991, the United Nations ranked Sierra Leone last of 160 countries in its Human Development Index. The country was taking its final steps towards war. Such credentials are definitely not what Sierra Leoneans deserve.
When the opposition APC won elections in 2007, it was something very infrequent in Africa. However, this was tarnished by accusations of fraud and manipulation. The decision by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) to nullify votes cast at polling stations with over 100% voter turn-out provoked outrage from the incumbent SLPP party. Of the 477 invalidated polling stations, 426 were in electoral strongholds of the SLPP.
The party accused the NEC’s Chief Commissioner, Christiana Thorpe, and the international community of connivance in an orchestrated scheme for regime change. The NEC maintained that in the absence of a provision in the electoral law specifying the body mandated to annul votes in instances of unambiguous electoral malfeasance; it had the de facto right and responsibility to do so. It also insisted that the annulled votes would not have affected the final outcome of the election. The SLPP countered that only the Supreme Court has the authority to cancel votes. Well, I guess this is all history now.
One thing that even the biometric registration of voters cannot detect is whether a registrant is underage or determines an individual’s nationality. We are yet to sort out our nationality issue.
One thing that is very clear is that when in power, both the APC and the SLPP have used their position to fund political campaigns and buy voters. This practice remains widespread. Political parties continue to organize and condone the intimidation of voters, often perpetrated by their youth wings.
Elections to a large extent have provided Salone’s true measure of progress. Interesting though, the fundamental character of political competition in Sierra Leone has not been altered. Identity, not ideology or policy, remains the paramount factor. Ethnic and regional voting blocs sustained by entrenched patronage networks and corruption are as rigid as ever. The APC draws majority support from the Temne, Limba and other northern tribes, and Krios of the Western Area, while the SLPP are favored by the Mende and tribes of the south-east. Defeat often entails exclusion and disadvantage for the losers and their regions. Salone’s Political parties still use violent means to achieve political goals. All the Inquiries set up to investigate electoral violence have come to naught.
The mining sector which should have bailed the country from its economic wilderness has little to show due mainly because of corruption in very high places. The 2018 elections may not reveal anything new. Another key feature of Salone politics is the changing of parties by normally very prominent personalities. This has been happening rather frequently. Since there is no law preventing this, it has been causing a lot of impasse between mainly the two leading parties.
What is very clear is that the nation seems stuck with the two main parties which have not been able to improve the lives of the people of Sierra Leone, a population smaller than that of Accra city. Remember, when a bird is alive, it eats ants. When the bird is dead, ants eat the bird.
By Beny Sam
Tuesday December 15, 2015
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