By KABS KANU
The Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP ) government of Retired Brigadier Maada Bio is desperately courting friendship with China, as economic and technical assistance from the West begins drying up through reluctance by donor and development partners to release aid in reprisals for the Paopa government’s bad governance, human rights abuses and last year’s elections chicanery by President Bio.
Though no economic sanctions have been officially announced by the West against the Bio government, save the U.S travel restrictions on those who undermined democracy and the hold placed on the U.S. $500 Millennium Challenge Corporation ( MCC ) Compact Award, there is an unofficial reluctance by Western countries and donor agencies to disburse funds to the Maada Bio government.
This drying up of aid has exacerbated the grave economic problems the government has created in Sierra Leone since it came to power in 2018, with the results that prices of basic commodities and the staple food have gone through the roof and the SLPP Government is now unable to pay civil servants and government workers their salaries and emoluments at the end of the month. Salary delays have become a regular feature of life once again in Sierra Leone and as at the time of writing, government salaries for April have not been paid. The government has defaulted on its financial commitments to vendors and it could not pay the Turkish Karpowership supplying electricity to the city and Freetown has once again become the darkest city in the world, as it was during the other SLPP regime, led by the late President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
The economic problems will only get worse because Bio and his Paopa government do not believe in humility and compromise. They will not, for instance, climb down their high horses and adjust their governance style and human rights practices to the conditions wanted by international partners and donor agencies. Bio will rather turn to new development partners and donor countries like China than obey the conditionalities of Western nations angry with him for his repressive governance, human rights violations and intolerance to democracy.
Turning to China for help itself by Bio is the height of political hypocrisy and duplicity. Was it not the same Maada Bio and his SLPP who campaigned ruthlessly against former President Ernest Koroma’s close fraternal and economic engagements with China , using an anti-China rhetoric as the centerpiece of his desperate campaign against the then ruling All People’s Congress ( APC) to come to power in 2018? Was it not the selfsame pompous and impetuous Maada Bio , who, on assuming power, cancelled the flagship APC multi-million dollar new inland Mammammah International Airport project to have been financed by China ? As far as Bio and his disciples were concerned, China was not good for Sierra Leone.
It is very shameful and disgraceful that it is same China he vilified that Maada Bio has now turned to after his relationship with the West became strained through his own misrule and human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings. The DIPLOMAT magazine reports that “The frequency of Sierra Leone’s high-level visits clearly demonstrates that China is a priority partner for the country. ”
Bio has since gone back to his vomit. Following a recent visit to China in March this year, Bio did not bat an eyelid when he told the Chinese media : “I must commend the leadership here for supporting some of those initiatives, like the Juba Bridge that you just mentioned. There are other roads. The stadium that we have is an example. There are quite a lot, as far as Chinese infrastructure development is concerned. They have been of immense importance to us,” Bio stated.
It remains to be seen whether China will serve the best interests of Sierra Leone better than the West, especially former colonial master, Britain and the United States , who actually hold the aces in international geopolitics and diplomacy.
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