What The June 24 Elections Are About
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
It is amazingly amazing, or funnily funny, how the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government of President Julius Maada Bio is trying to fatten an emaciated cow at the eleventh hour on “Luma”. The point is: such an act will be an effort in futility even if the veterinarian is a magician from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Please check J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels for ease of reference.)!
And make no mistake about it, what the June 24 elections are all about are the “bread and butter issues”; the dismal human rights record of the Bio-led administration (as highlighted in the latest Amnesty International Report); the charade of fighting corruption, and the SLPP government’s willful bastardizations of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone and other democratic tenets. In a nutshell, June 24 will be a sort of referendum on whether majority of Sierra Leoneans are prepared to continue suffering or are determined to get out from their current economic miseries.
And if I were Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, the leader and 2023 presidential candidate for the All People’s Congress (APC), my main campaign message will revolve around these themes: If you believe your life is better off today than it was five years ago; then re-vote the SLPP. But if you believe that the SLPP has not been fit for the purpose for which it was elected in 2018; then vote for a change of government on June 24!
And this reminds me of the fabled masquerade in one of Chinua Achebe’s novels who, despite being an illiterate, knows that he should take to his heels whenever someone says: “catch am”. Equally so, majority of Sierra Leoneans might be ignorant of macroeconomics and microeconomics but they know which political party is responsible for them being unable to afford one un-square meal a day! For the SLPP government cannot be keep telling majority of Sierra Leoneans that their lives have improved, under its watchful watch in the last four-plus-years, when they are constantly hungry and angry, their pockets emptily empty, and their dining tables bare!
And it is now apparently apparent that President Bio should no longer be trusted to make decisions on behalf of the people of Sierra Leone. Most of his economic decisions, or policies, are disastrously disastrous! His first appointment of Jacob Jusu Saffa aka JJ Blood as Minister of Finance and that of Professor Kelfala Kallon, as Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, are just two of the many examples of our Head of State’s inability to identify capable lieutenants to help him solve the “bread and butter issues”. It appears as if even when he knows that some of those he has appointed are under-performers; he doesn’t seem to have the stomach for firing them except in circumstances which are not even clear to himself!
And the amazing joke about the SLPP government’s attempt to solve the “bread and butter issues” is its increase of the Minimum Wage from Le500,000 to Le600,000 while a bag of rice is now over Le600,000. It is like asking sane Sierra Leoneans to fetch water from the stream with a sieve or a bottomless bucket! It is sadly sad to note that, according to the World Food Programme 2022 Report, “57% of Sierra Leoneans, more than half the country, are food insecure and a shocking 26.2% of Sierra Leonean children have impaired growth and development due to chronic malnutrition”. That was as of October 2022. The situation currently is appallingly appalling.
According to a recent post on social media by one untiring blogger, who goes by the nom de plume “Perspective Scope”, “it is very clear that things got bad with prices of basic commodities skyrocketing from 2018 to 2020 before even COVID-19 came around or the excuses of global economic crisis”. He posits that the “US Dollar buying rate increased from Le750,000 for $100 in March 2018 during austerity by 44% in 2 years before COVID-19 to Le1,080,000 by August 2020”. But President Bio and his toadies say Sierra Leoneans, generally, are doing quite well simply because the Head of State is still able to scoop monies from the Consolidated Revenue Fund to charter flights for his countless overseas travels.
And despite the SLPP government’s claim of its good international standings on human rights issues; its standing at home is miserably miserable (as highlighted in the latest Amnesty International Report). Let me, for the moment, pretend as if the extra-judicial killings at Tonko Limba; Lunsar, Makeni; Tombo, and the Pademba Road Correctional Centre in Freetown never happened. But the manner in which the Bio-led administration has been trampling on the fundamental freedoms and rights of APC members has always been shamefully shameful. I will highlight just two of the countless instances. In June 2022, Dr Samura Kamara and his entourage were obstructed by state security personnel whilst on their way to participate in a political rally ahead of the by-election in Constituency 056, Bendugu Town, northeast of the country. A similar occurrence occurred when the police blocked the APC presidential candidate and his entourage while they were going to attend a political function in Port Loko, north-west Sierra Leone. In the case of Bendugu, that unfortunate action was allegedly led by an Assistant Inspector-General (AIG) of Police.
And on March 10 this year the APC running-mate, Honourable Chernor Ramadan Maju Bah, and his entourage were blocked from entering into Koindu Town in Kailahun District, eastern Sierra Leone. This was another calibrated act by operatives of the ruling SLPP, especially when the Toyota pick-up van that was used to do the obstruction was alleged to have been owned by the SLPP Kailahun District Chairman, Gbassay Ngobeh.
And the SLPP government’s charade of fighting corruption has always been laughably laughable. The Bio-led administration cannot be claiming to remove the specks from other people’s eyes while theirs are being blinded by specks. When the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) starts investigating the issue of “unexplained wealth”, among members of the ruling elite, then I will begin to take notice of that charade. But for now, as it has always been since President Bio took over in 2018, the ACC is just another political tool used by the SLPP government against members of the opposition. As I see it, the rags-to-riches statuses of countless government ministers and other presidential appointees, in just five years, are testimonies that President Bio’s so-called fight against corruption appears to be a charade performed at a circus by intellectual clowns!
And the issue of the SLPP government’s willful bastardizations of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone and other democratic tenets will be some of the issues that will be on the ballot on June 24. The alacrity with which the SLPP government has violated the national constitution and parliamentary proceedings, coupled with the consistent sleights of the judicial gavel, shows the Bio-led administration’s disregard for both constitutional and democratic niceties.
And I will go on and on and on with the follies, the lies, and the half-truths which have characterized the Bio-led administration since 2018 to date. But what is certainly certain is that the June 24 elections are going to be about the “bread and butter issues”; the dismal human rights record of the Bio-led administration(as highlighted in the latest Amnesty International Report); the charade of fighting corruption, and the SLPP government’s willful bastardizations of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone and other democratic tenets.
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