*FROM REBRANDING TO SCARRING?*
By Oumar Farouk Sesay
Two phrases dominated Sierra Leone’s political landscape during the 2018 election campaign that brought the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) to power: New Direction and Rebranding.
They were more than campaign slogans. They were declarations of intent, promising to rescue a nation whose image, we were told, had been battered by misgovernance, corruption, economic hardship, and declining public confidence. We were told Sierra Leone stood perilously close to the precipice, and the SLPP positioned itself as the political force capable of changing its course and restoring its reputation.
Nearly eight years later, those promises must confront the evidence of governance.
Has Sierra Leone gained the respected national identity it was promised, or have new scars deepened an already wounded image? Have we moved back from the brink, or simply changed the political hands guiding us toward it?
The tragedy of political rebranding is not merely that a government may fail to repair the image it inherited. In its determination to project a new image, it may neglect the conditions that damaged the old one. When perception replaces performance, rebranding risks becoming another instrument of national scarring.
National rebranding is not inherently wrong. A country must cultivate international confidence, attract investment and project its achievements. But a nation’s reputation cannot be manufactured independently of the quality of its governance. It is earned through credible institutions, public accountability, economic opportunity and respect for the rule of law.
Consider the troubling questions surrounding transnational drug trafficking and Sierra Leone’s vulnerability to international criminal networks. Allegations must not be confused with established facts, nor should individual wrongdoing be equated with collective national guilt. Nevertheless, such concerns carry serious reputational consequences.
Criminal networks can penetrate even well-governed societies. The decisive test is how institutions respond: whether investigations are credible, accountability is impartial, and the state demonstrates the political will to protect its sovereignty from criminal infiltration. National reputation is defended not merely by official denials but by transparent and effective institutional action.
This raises a more fundamental concern about the growing prominence of perception management in our politics.
Every government has a legitimate responsibility to explain its policies, communicate its achievements, and correct misinformation. The problem arises when the machinery of communication appears more energetic than the machinery of correction; when greater effort is invested in changing what citizens believe about a problem than in changing the conditions that produced it.
A government may win an argument in a controversy and still lose the confidence of its people. It may discredit a critic without disproving the criticism. It may dominate the public conversation while the underlying problem remains unresolved.
A scandal does not disappear because a favourable interpretation has been circulated. Institutional failure does not become success because it has been wrapped in the language of reform. And hunger does not diminish because an economic indicator has been celebrated.
Nowhere is this contradiction more consequential than in the economy.
During the 2018 campaign, the popular refrain “Tolongbo nor go sidon ya” became a soundtrack of discontent with the outgoing administration. Alongside it was the familiar cry, “Angri borku”—hunger is too much. These expressions of genuine economic hardship became instruments of political mobilization.
But hunger has no political allegiance.
It recognizes neither the APC’s red nor the SLPP’s green. It is measured in the shrinking contents of the market basket, the purchasing power of wages and the number of meals families can afford.
Nearly eight years later, the question remains: Has hunger retreated, or has it merely changed its political address?
Sierra Leone saw significant moderation in inflation in 2025, an improvement worth acknowledging. Yet the renewed inflationary pressures reported in 2026 underline the fragility of that progress.
More importantly, declining inflation does not necessarily mean prices are falling. When the price of a bag of rice rises dramatically and then stabilizes at that elevated level, the statistical improvement does not restore the purchasing power of the family that can no longer afford it.
The market woman does not purchase inflation rates; she purchases goods. The worker does not feed his children with economic forecasts; he feeds them with what his wages can buy.
Estimates suggesting that about half the population remained below the international extreme-poverty threshold in 2025 further highlight the gap between macroeconomic indicators and household welfare. While these estimates should be interpreted carefully, the underlying challenge is clear.
Certainly, Sierra Leone’s economic difficulties cannot be attributed solely to the present administration. The pandemic, global instability, international commodity prices, and structural weaknesses have all contributed. Acknowledging these constraints, however, does not absolve the government of responsibility for mitigating their consequences.
The New Direction has pursued worthy initiatives, including free “quality” school education, agricultural development programs, and efforts to stabilize the economy. Ultimately, however, policies must be judged by their measurable results. Expanding access to education, for instance, does not necessarily guarantee quality.
Nearly eight years is sufficient time for promises to accumulate a record and for slogans to confront the realities of governance. The longer an administration remains in office, the less persuasive inherited failures become as explanations for present shortcomings. To lead is to forfeit the right to make excuses.
Yet Sierra Leone’s predicament is larger than the SLPP or any single administration.
Our political history is littered with promises of renewal. Successive governments have arrived proclaiming a break with the past, only to discover that changing the occupants of power is easier than changing the habits of power. Political parties have repeatedly promised national transformation while reproducing practices they once condemned.
Are we trapped in an endless cycle of rebranding the same failures under different political colours?
Perhaps our deeper national failure is the lack of enduring commitments that can withstand electoral competition and changes in government. That should be the true new direction and Rebranding.
Sierra Leone urgently needs a national compact: a broadly negotiated agreement that sets fundamental national priorities, which no administration should casually abandon and no opposition should recklessly undermine.
Such a compact would not abolish political competition or diminish democratic choice. Rather, it would establish minimum national consensus on constitutional governance, institutional independence, credible elections, corruption, organised crime, responsible resource management, education, healthcare, food security and economic opportunity.
Crucially, it must not become another elite settlement negotiated behind closed doors and presented to citizens for endorsement.
It should emerge through structured national deliberations, beginning at the community and ward levels and extending through districts to the national arena. Political parties, civil society, traditional and religious authorities, professional associations, women, young people, and marginalized communities must help define priorities that should endure across successive governments.
Deliberative democracy could complement our representative institutions by giving citizens meaningful opportunities to shape these commitments.
The resulting agreement must contain measurable obligations, transparent implementation arrangements, independent monitoring and regular public reporting. Otherwise, it risks becoming another beautifully worded declaration destined for the archive of unfulfilled promises.
A national compact cannot guarantee permanent solutions. But it could establish a durable framework within which political competition takes place without repeatedly dismantling the foundations of national development.
Ultimately, Sierra Leone cannot keep changing political slogans while preserving the conditions that make those slogans necessary.
The real New Direction must begin where partisan promises end: with a national commitment that places the republic above its rulers, institutions above personalities, and the future above the electoral ambitions of the present.
History does not judge a government by the brand it advertised, but by the marks it left on the country.
And a nation is not healed by changing the language of its wounds, but by confronting what continues to inflict them.
Leave a Reply