SLPP’s ‘Abuses’ And ‘Isms’ Have Provoked Virtual Protest
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
The ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP)’s seemingly perpetration and perpetuation of naked tribalism, regionalism, nepotism, and maladministration, coupled with allegations of massive corruption drenching the SLPP government, have provoked some Sierra Leoneans abroad to come up with the idea of a virtual protest against all those viruses.
Despite the SLPP government has repealed Part V of the Public Order Act of 1965, which was passed by another SLPP government and which had criminalised libel, the “Cyber Vigilantes” in its fold have invented another watered down version of Part V of the1965 Public Order Act. This time, it is the Cybercrime Bill which is aimed at preventing citizens from expressing most of their fundamental Rights and Freedoms enshrined in Chapter Three of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone.
Currently, Sierra Leone appears to be a sort of a police state where majority of her citizens are constantly being denied by the Sierra Leone Police the freedom to stage peaceful protests. It is a country where those who are not members of the ruling SLPP are not regarded as “true Sierra Leoneans”; it is a nation where Democracy has been taken to the slaughterhouse; it is a land where bad governance and abuse of power are intertwined, and it is a place where most of her citizens are persistently being intimidated and harassed simply because of either their tribe or the regions they hailed from.
The issue of tribalism and regionalism appears to have always been the obsession of senior members of the SLPP long before they assumed power in 2018. It is a truism that what a man thinks, or men think, he makes, or they make, Freudian slips of it. The SLPP was, and still is, so obsessed with tribalism and regionalism that in the “Executive Summary of [the] Report of the Governance Transition Team 2018”, they yanked these two monsters from underneath the carpet and flung them on the table. The SLPP Transition Team, then headed by the former Chief Minister now Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor David Francis, had alleged that, “…Despite its rhetoric about ‘inclusive governance’, the former Government of President Koroma pursued a policy of ‘tribalism’ and regionalism in its recruitment and promotion of personnel at State House, in Government agencies and commissions, and in diplomatic postings. Ethnically favoured appointments constituted roughly 71 percent of all senior and middle-level appointments and postings to the country’s foreign missions…”
And to further concretize the SLPP’s thinking, or the current State House’s thought process, President Julius Maada Bio in his maiden address in the Chamber of Parliament on Thursday 10 May 2018 noted that, “…In the last ten years, the building blocks of national cohesion and the feeling of belonging of all citizens have gravely crumbled. The recent governance strategy has been characterised by tribalism, divisiveness, exclusion and the weakening and subversion of state governing institutions.”
From that “Executive Summary of [the] Report of the Governance Transition Team 2018” and the Commander-in-Chief’s address “on the occasion of the State Opening of the First Session of the Fifth Parliament of the Second Republic of Sierra Leone”, above, one sees that the Bio-administration has been setting the premise for what it intends to implement at the expense of national cohesion. So, I’m only surprised at those Sierra Leoneans who are surprised at all the presidential appointments made so far. What is now seen in the country is the seemingly systematic execution of all the negative “isms” which the SLPP accused the former Government of President Koroma of. And President Bio seems to be methodically weakening and subverting state institutions more than Sir Albert Margai whose SLPP fathered the1965 Public Order Act which the Bio-led administration has modernised as the Cybercrime Bill.
But if those have only been the viruses now plaguing Sierra Leone, I would have been contended with the fact that President Bio is honest enough to have told the nation, during his media adventures early this year, that he has been making those appointments on the basis that he is very much comfortable with the “work ethics” of his tribesmen! Fair enough for that fair comment.
But when allegations of misuse of public monies and donors funds by members of the First Family and senior members of the Bio-administration, coupled with maladministration, are thrown into the cauldron; then the handshake has undeniably reached the elbow (to borrow from Chinua Achebe).
It is in those contexts that countless Sierra Leoneans, mainly in the diaspora, have decided that if the Sierra Leone Police have been reluctant to give clearance for peaceful protests inside the country; then a virtual protest could be experimented abroad. According to the organisers of this would-be virtual protest, it is aimed at raising “awareness and seek changes to the ongoing violations of the Constitution, the ultra-violations of our democracy, massive economic hardships, human rights abuses, [allegations of] massive corruption, and depletion of our national resources”.
Now, Saturday 19 June 2021has been pegged for the D-Day. The Nationalist newspaper reported in its 10 June 2021 edition that, “…This global virtual protest will be powered by Facebook, Zoom, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter and followed by leaders of Sierra Leone’s development partners worldwide. It is expected to be a protest that has never been seen in the country’s history as it is expected to bring participants from five continents. Prominent Sierra Leoneans, from all walks of life, are reported to have been invited to join in to send messages that they jointly and individually reject what is going on in Sierra Leone under the watch of the Bio-administration….”
Well, it is like suppressed Sierra Leoneans have found a clever way round the Sierra Leone Police’s clay-feet reluctance to issue clearance for peaceful protests. It is like saying that if protests cannot take place physically along Siaka Stevens, Sanders and Campbell Streets in Freetown; they will now be taking place on Facebook, Zoom, Youtube, and Twitter.
It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with a quote from Aesop, the legendary Greek fabulist (a person who composes or relates fables), who said that, “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office”. I hope the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is listening, or has listened, because great thieves seem to have the knack for constantly slipping through dragnets in Sierra Leone! And the organisers of the 19 June 2021 virtual protest may have taken note of that also.
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