SIERRA LEONE (Election Registration)
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Sierra Leone is sorrowful. Administratively you would think it a parody when in fact, you’re perceiving reality.
Here, four things:
1) Before a national voter-registeration is commenced, the Electoral Commission found it necessary to circulate a statement proclaiming its impartiality. In doing so, they thought they’re being dutiful and professional. But of course, the chimes couldn’t be louder; the red flags couldn’t flutter any more tumultuously, to catch the public and the world’s attention.
That such a statement needed to be written and published at all, strips away any residual confidence in the institution. And all the carefully-selected cats who work there, are not alien to this distrust. Even they don’t trust themselves to be fair adjudicators. Hence the disclaimer, the ritualistic fair-play statement, akin to that which is read to opponents in world title fight.
Judging by the noises/ protestations emanating from the country – fair or exaggerated- the system is as rotten as expected, despite the statement. Administrative laptops with uncharged batteries is as Sierra Leonean as it gets. If not, why conduct registers in unfurnished structures without electricity? No, these are not teething issues but lack of imagination, incompetence.
2) The British High Commissioner, armed with the Creole-accent of a Fula-Musu from Guinea, and her team are compelled to observe not yet the elections, but the registration process. Meaning: we are not a serious country.
We can’t even be trusted on registering an electorate without tilting the scales to compensate our loyalties.
Why is it even necessary for the British High Commissioner to inspect the efficacy in the processes of registering ourselves? Our leaders have no shame.
Every little ‘institution’ is captured and owned by the state. And none can be trusted to work for the country, or the people. So, after 61 years of objective mediocrity, also known as Independence, the responsibility of refereeing our elections is returned to the former colonial administrators and their allies, the EU and USA.
The origin is unknown here. But the English have a small word for such monumental hopelessness: Sad.
3) The president and his Missus had their photos published as they visited a centre for registration. Now, if the president is not on a voter-registration record, then what is there to say about our country as a political experiment? Why should anyone trust an administrative activity in Sierra Leone?
The president’s appearance at a makeshift tent to register is proof. Every agency is open to rigging and manipulation.
4) Owning his role in the shame, the former president has his pictures on social media, registering to vote too! Elsewhere, he’s made statements urging people to do the same. Which begs the question: What happened to their registration the last time if they’ve not changed residence?
What’s wrong with these people? Can they embarrass us more?
For the lack of foresight, refusal to provide fair leadership, and the official revulsion to progressive policies, the ritual of wasting public money for performative transparency cannot end.
An actual country, has no credible record of the citizenry. No wonder, a recently rushed and concluded census remains the subject of controversy.
No genius required here. The official trick now is to engineer the live voter registration to chime with the contentious census data. What a country of Einsteins.
Most of the mundane stuff we promote as success are not remotely related to good governance or policy but luck, external events and foreign interventions.
Politicians and public figures who went speechless, failed to challenge the president on calling ordinary people, terrorists, for daring to express their displeasure at lack of improvement in their circumstances, have suddenly found their voices. They are promoting the importance of civic participation; making cheap videos urging people to register to vote. As if any Sierra Leonean ever had political representation.
Apart from very few patriots, Sierra Leone is a racket. The politics itself, the process of election that people reflexively valorise with lofty civics lessons, is becoming useless to ordinary people.
