*Upgrade The Standard Of Debate On National Issues!*
*By Saikujohn Barrie*
*23/4/2023 @16:55*
As elections draw closer in Sierra Leone, politicians and their supporters are expected to sell their political ideas and solutions to the country’s problems to the electorates.
Alas! What I have been observing lately on both social media and national radio stations is that Politicians from the two major political parties, Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and the All People Congress (APC) resorting to the same old tactics of hanging on to only highlighting the failures of the previous APC government or highlighting the prevalent failures of the SLPP government without telling Sierra Leoneans about the solutions to the highlighted problems.
Firstly, most of the supporters of the main opposition party are busy emphasizing the prevalent economic hardship and burgeoning suffering of Sierra Leoneans, which is somehow understandable.
However, the APCs have identified the problems and failures of the Sierra Leone People’s Party government, yet they have not come up with any solution to the myriad of problems subsisting in the country.
The APCs think they will be elected into office for merely identifying the SLPP failures without properly marketing any good solutions to the country’s problem.
Sadly, some of the SLPP’s key stakeholders and supporters are reciprocating by only focusing on the failures of the past APC government than explaining to Sierra Leoneans the steps they will be taking to solve the current economic adversities and other problems affecting the lives of Sierra Leoneans.
Sierra Leoneans are expecting to see the articulations of policies aiming to solve the current economic miseries affecting every household in the country save for the political class and their family members.
Disappointingly, these politicians are not treating Sierra Leoneans with the seriousness which is why they resort to the same old pathways of just citing the past failures of the APC to justify the current economic malaise in the country.
For instance, tell Sierra Leoneans about your policies and mechanisms you will adopt to reverse the inflation in the country and tell Sierra Leoneans what you will do to ameliorate the suffering of the masses.
I acknowledge the fact that prices of basic commodities have soared in many countries, but governments around the world have not stopped only blaming Covid 19 and Russia-Ukraine war. Other countries’ economists and experts are busy cracking their heads and designing policies that serve as solutions to ease the burden of hardship and suffering on the citizens.
As a result, some countries have succeeded to ease the burden on the shoulders of consumers by example lowering the taxes of workers and increasing their hourly pay so that they can afford to buy the commodities they need. In other countries, governments are paying bills such as gas and electricity for their citizens just to diminish the suffering of the masses.
Yet in Sierra Leone instead of telling us what they will do or have done to tackle the problems affecting the nation, most of the government officials and supporters are busy highlighting the failures of the Ernest Koroma government as if the APC is still in power.
When a sitting government bank on only highlighting the failures of a government (APC) it had booted out of power almost five years ago without bringing tangible solutions to prevalent perennial problems: then such is a demonstration of incompetence and lack of ideas for solving the problems at hand.
This is exactly what the Sierra Leone People’s Party of President Maada Bio is doing at the moment, while the main opposition APC is also failing to give hope to Sierra Leoneans by not coming up with planned solutions.
I get a bored and jaded reading or listening to these foolish arguments and counterarguments advanced by both the SLPP with their NGC partners and APCs operatives on social media.
Arguments devoid of solutions and also arguments that lack the requisite standard in serious democratic debates.
Let me hastily add this, I am not saying you should not passively mention the failures of the past government, my point is you should not be fixated on the failures of the past government to the extent that it appears as if you are using such as justifications to your SLPP’s failed economic policies.
The SLPP should not expect Sierra Leoneans to listen to nattering and prattle after they have economically failed Sierra Leoneans just the same way the APCs did before the 2018 elections.
In addition, the current economic situation in which Sierra Leone has exposed the Sierra Leone government’s economic experts to ridicule, especially when the notorious economist J.J Saffa was all over radio stations across the country in 2018 downloading economic theories promising to fix the bread and butter problem in six months, but now the once economic celebrity, JJ Saffa or JJ Blood, has evaporated into thin air.
He keeps distancing himself from the ration stations these days.
It is on this note, I say Sierra Leone Politicians should upgrade the standard of debate on national issues.
I rest my case.
