PAOPA: A GOVERNMENT FROM HELL
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara
State governments are instituted basically to provide leadership in running the affairs of people in a country, maintain order, and providing essential public services, national security, economic security, and assistance, as well as, dispense justice, ensure the rights of each human and protect the country so that its citizens, businesses, and organizations can pursue happiness, live a healthy life, and chase opportunities.
However, while some governments are ever restless, and putting in place prudent mechanisms to achieve their purpose of being, others would feign to, but their strives are for self-glorification through pilfering and embezzling of the sacred resources meant for the welfare of the citizens.
In Sierra Leone, the President Julius Maada Bio-led SLPP aka New Direction or Paopa Government assumed the mantle of state governance in 2018. And, although they campaigned on the platter of a new direction that was expected to turn Sierra Leone into a country worth living in, grumbling abound among the citizens, that he has done little or nothing to uphold the tenets of democracy and good governance to fulfil his basic purpose of presiding over the country.
Monday, 4th April 2022, marked the Bio government’s four years in office, and the Salone Compass would attempt to digest in this piece the deficiencies of the so-called New Direction administration to coincide with its “4th Anniversary Week.”
Sierra Leoneans are preparing to go to the next national polls, as the nation’s electoral body has announced 24th June of next year, 2023, to be the D-day.
But how President Bio and his government have become loose canons crisscrossing the country for another mandate with loads of new promises to the people remains the hysteria Sierra Leoneans are unable to interpret.
Pronounced as the winner of the 2018 presidential elections, Bio took a bold, strategic maiden step to visit his predecessor, Dr Ernest Bai Koroma, seeking his blessings and mentoring. However, this was not the way to go as such a move was swiftly foiled either by Bio himself or his henchmen. And, sworn into office on 12th May of the same year, it then emerged that rather than falling to work with the former president, the paopa government was to make him and his entire outgoing government and existing party functionaries the main target for oppression and vilification to the world.
In the aim to accomplish that vicious objective, the paopa clan confiscated all passports holden by Ministers and other functionaries of the Koroma-led APC Government and banned them from traveling abroad, with their bank accounts frozen, and their benefits packages not also timely paid. The former president was linked with dishonorable allegations that the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) hastened to whip him with routine invitations and questioning, though he could not be ruffled and broken down at the end of it all.
This came just after the Bio Government’s Transition Team branded his predecessor as running a state racketeering enterprise. In that same report of the Governance Transition Team 2018, Bio’s Chief Minister, Prof David John Francis, who headed the Team indicted the former president’s regime of fostering “tribalism and regionalism in its recruitment and promotion of personnel at State House, in Government agencies and commissions, and diplomatic postings”.
He further accused the bygone Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma’s government of promoting what he referred to as “ethnically favoured appointments” which he said formed about 71 percent of all senior and middle-level appointments and postings to the country’s foreign missions. Also “Ethnic favouritism” in the award of government contracts, scholarships, commercial bank loans, and regional distribution of development projects.
Prof Francis’ derogatory assertions and the alarming fibs in his led Transition Report gave birth to the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry (COI), which has seemingly turned into a waste of billions of taxpayers’ money meant for their welfare.
Accordingly, one cannot be denied saying that the malicious fibs of David Francis and his Government Transition Team, led to the setting up of a rogue and ethno-regionally selective Commission of Inquiry against the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) party to obliterate it from the country’s political landscape remain the harbinger of national hassle and the eventual loss of focus by the Bio government much that he’s incapable of bringing about progress in the country.
In another sense, it served as an open caution for investors to shy away, especially, amid the termination of legally procedural business pacts signed by the then government and foreign investors.
President Bio could not suppress his addiction to not seeing his government working together with the APC as a team in the spirit of national cohesion for progress, which he confirmed to Sierra Leoneans in a radio studio the other day. He said during that exclusive interview that he inherited a divided country, in that the colonizers had since partitioned Sierra Leone into Shebro, Mende, Temne, and Limba lands, and that he would only be comfortable working with those he know and trust from the region he hails from.
Failed in their sinister plan to rope in heavyweights of the APC through the COI, the Bio government operatives turned the tides against all perceived members, supporters, and sympathizers of the APC; party stalwarts were subdued to harassment, using the Sierra Leone Police who frequently invited them for questioning, and incarcerated them on trumped-up allegations.
To wield the opportunity of instituting laws in their favour that could make them bulldoze their way with whatever diabolical activities, the Bio government imposed a Speaker on the House of Parliament, using the Police that has become a hitting force for the government, to beat opposition Legislators right inside the Well of Parliament. And, not only that, the Bio government went further to remove ten democratically elected members of parliament on the APC side using the Judiciary. He replaced them with SLPP partisans without any bye-elections, so did to gain the majority in Parliament so that they would have a field day passing instruments into laws in their favour, no matter how much bad such laws could be.
Then the ethnic cleansing of the civil service reared up its ugly heads! Thousands of workers perceived to align with the APC were sacked with their benefits packages not paid and without respect for job tenure security in some cases. The abrupt removal of the Anti-Corruption Commissioner, Ady Macauley Esq, replaced with Francis Ben Kelfala Esq, is one shining example, among many.
The Bio-led government is on record for not just perpetrating egregious human rights abuses against Sierra Leoneans but has committed serious preventable killings in the APC heartlands of the North, Northwest, and Western regions, using the Police and Military. The killing incident at a village near Mile 91, that of the Makeni protesters against the removal of their power machine; the killing in Lunsar and Tombo, including in Tonko Limba, and the brutal massacre of prisoners at the Maximum Correctional Centre on Pademba Road in Freetown, are all shreds of evidence of the paopa government’s human rights infractions. Other human rights offences include the jailing of perceived opponents upon orders from above for flimsy reasons. More heinous is when even as the supporters of government would wreak havoc on their fellow citizens for exercising their democratic right to associate and disassociate, nothing would come out of it.
Bastardization of the Constitution by the President himself amid the rampant breach of the rule of law and blatant rigging of elections by his surrogates in democratically independent institutions are also hallmarks of the Bio government. Under President Bio’s watch, election materials would be destroyed by ministers and their paid-up thugs in the presence of police officers, but no action would be taken. Sierra Leone has also witnessed a scenario where tens of votes were changed and fabricated into hundred and tens, and the institutions have not only become inert in the face of condemnations but used the same figures to declare the ruling party’s candidate the winner even though he was beaten hands down at a Local Council bye-election in Kionadugu District, Northern Region of Sierra Leone. Not a single bye-election has gone by without the use of the Police to instill fear in voters, and in the SLPP strongholds, terrorism is the order of the day to threaten the lives of voters and scared them to cast votes for opposition parties, especially the APC.
The Bio government has clutched still and unyielding fingers around all democratic institutions to the point they have become ethnical and partisan so much so that donor and development partners would be bold to tell not just about their untrustworthiness but cautioned the very paopas to be virtuous in their governance of the state. But they would not yield, except to become rebels against such trusted partners, such as the European Union and the World Bank, among other international bodies.
Four years down the line, Sierra Leoneans have not witnessed any proliferation of foreign investors in their country, making the economy face a nosediving trend. Some fourteen months to go for another national ballot day, the paopa government hasn’t propounded any sound economic policy, except the scramble for the nation’s wealth through endemic corruption. Even as annual audit reports have exposed egregious corrupt practices in Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of government over the time-bound, and also, forgery of hotel receipts during diaspora trips, double-dipping and probable money laundry activities at the office of the President as recent, the assumed imposed Speaker of Parliament could still not allow effective debates on such reports for onward action by the ACC, itself, understood to have the notoriety of shielding the paopa and ruling party loyalists.
Today, the pump price of fuel takes an unparalleled leap, leaving transportation costs neck-breaking, whilst the basic commodities are no longer affordable, and so, the impoverished Sierra Leoneans have been plunged into more misery. They now spend more money to secure a single meal for their family members than they did under the erstwhile government. The dream of the people to live in homes of their own has been dashed under the inept paopa government, for the cost of building materials has become astronomically high that only the ilk of paopa state looters and other wealthy people can build houses, unlike the Ernest Bai Koroma-led APC during which people were competing to put up private houses of modern amenity.
This is the government, before their ascendancy to power, that professed to have all it takes to govern Sierra Leone and propel her to paradise. And they are on record for promising that if voted in, they would fix the country’s economic problem within six months, specifically, the “bread and butter issue” as they dubbed it. But what the world is witnessing now is a country where the citizens are abused with brazen impunity, and being dumped in the abysm of poverty and neglect, while the paopas and few of their loyalists are enriching themselves by the day.
After four years of the Paopa Government, the country is being pitched in darkness, bringing more agony to the people. Sadly, while sober-minded governments are working round the clock to solve their energy problems, seeking ways and means to cushion external shocks, Sierra Leoneans are confronted with a “new direction” government that is worse than the devil! For them, it’s an entrenched policy to capitalize on any problem to create more problems in their quest to exploit the citizens.
Education is a sham under Bio’s watch. Although his government’s flagship program is free quality education, sieving parents’ emotions can leave one in utter awe, for they would tell how they now spend on their children even more amid an overwhelming high cost of living than at any other time in the democratic era of Sierra Leone. Days were better even during the “Revo” period. Yet, the paopa government would be fibbing around about having created the education platform from which each parent is saving 500 United States dollars yearly.
The health sector, which was booming during the erstwhile government, is nothing to write home about under Bio’s watch as the poor state of health facilities tells it all. The agriculture sector is appalling, making the country depend hugely on imported rice which is the people’s staple food. The whopping sum of money that trickled into the hands of the Paopa government has become a mystery; tractors were distributed among party cronies and used for individual purposes, and so, the much-hyped Tormabum Rice Project remains a white elephant. On the business front, employment opportunities are hard to come by, and even those employed cannot receive salaries that are commensurate with the cost of living; trading is unprofitable under the paopa’s monster tax regime, whilst other income-generating activities have become stagnated, and hence, starvation permeates all fours of the country.
Amid all this, the paopa surrogates and spin doctors are strongly defending the mess, but the more they do, the more intense Sierra Leoneans become desperate, even wishing that the ballot was here instant for them to eliminate the Bio administration from the country’s political auditorium.
Things are extremely upside down in the country. President Bio’s gross violations of the constitution and human rights are a painfully indelible reality in the hearts of millions of Sierra Leoneans, from Freetown to Kailahun, Port Loko to Pujehun, Kambia to Kono, Kabala to Moyamba, Bombali to Kenema and Tonkolili to Bo. The memories of those killed by the police in many places across Sierra Leone remain raw!
The Judiciary is one of Sierra Leone’s democratic institutions earmarked by trusted International Development Partners as untrustworthy. Impliedly, every Sierra Leonean is concerned with how the justice system is being handled under the Bio administration. President Bio promised this nation a clean and professional judicial system, but he has reneged on his promise. The judiciary has failed to dispense equal and fair justice, in that law for opposition members is a soft touch and ride by loyalists of the ruling party. The country has seen a situation where lawsuits filed by SLPP members were swiftly arbitrated, whilst those brought against them would be left to rot on the selves of court chambers. Justice has also been unfairly dispensed against opposition activists and other dissenting voices, all to punish and silence them.
The Judiciary, the Sierra Leone Police, the Electoral Commission Sierra Leone, Parliament, and the Political Parties Registration Commission, among a host of institutions, have become caricatures of their exuberant past under Maada Bio’s paopa government, the more reason majority of the electorates say Bio’s Paopa government seems to have come from the depth of Hell Fire and for which they are ever prepared to kick out his failed and undemocratic regime out of power in 2023.
