Dr. Doma: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 21 June 2024:
Recent events have once again spotlighted the troubling state of Sierra Leone’s politics.
Following the 2023 election, both local and international observers highlighted numerous irregularities, casting doubt on the transparency of the process.
These concerns prompted the formation of a tripartite committee in January to investigate the issues and propose electoral reforms. However, the committee’s journey has been marred by political maneuvering and apparent deception.
Anticipation grew as as publication of the committee’s report on June 19th approached. Yet, just days before, the All People’s Congress (APC) abruptly withdrew their participation from the committee, only to rejoin the day before the report was due to be handed over to President Bio and stakeholders.
This back-and-forth raised eyebrows and deepened suspicions about the true intentions of our political leaders.
On June 19th, rather than the eagerly awaited report, citizens were left with more disappointment and confusion. The promised presentation was postponed, and a summary of the committee’s work was instead presented to the President.
Dr. Samura Kamara, the APC leader and 2023 presidential candidate, addressed the nation on June 19th. His words offered little reassurance and comfort to a public already disillusioned by the political theater playing out before them.
The sight of Dr. Julius Maada Bio and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) representatives smiling alongside Dr. Samura Kamara and the APC team was presented as a symbol of unity.
However, many Sierra Leoneans saw it as a sham, an image masking the deeper realities of political manipulation and treachery.
This apparent camaraderie between political rivals did little to convince the public of genuine progress.
The truth is bare: our politicians continue to deceive us, manipulating processes and playing games with our future.
Despite the claims of working towards electoral integrity, the actions of these leaders suggest a different agenda—one that prioritizes their power over the needs of the people.
For the youth of Sierra Leone, the future seems particularly gloomy. The old guards of the country’s politics, who have long held sway, appear unwilling to enact meaningful change, leaving little hope for a better political landscape.
As the cycle of empty promises and strategic deception continues, the nation’s aspirations for genuine democracy and reform remain unmet.
The current state of Sierra Leone’s politics is a tragic reflection of failed leadership. Politicians, through their deceitful actions, have betrayed the trust of the people, perpetuating a system that serves their interests rather than those of the nation.
As citizens, especially the youths, we must pursue a shift in our attitudes and end our dependence on the self-serving political class. Only then can we achieve genuine change, address our hopes and aspirations, empower ourselves to realize our full potential, and take our rightful place in regional and global societies.
What else are you expecting? Do you belong to that select group of people that includes the Editor of the organizer Newspaper that June the 19th is more or less the denouement and rising inflexion point in Sierra leone’s chequered political trajectory. The script and denouement of the sham Tripartite, in my candid opinion, was on the day Orsamu sneaked into the State Lodge and made a handshake deal with Bio in a Qùid Pro Quo of promising Orsamu to take it easy in exchange for a coasting to the Presidency in 2028.
This culminated in the ECSL office in the former Speaker of Parliament’s home town caught up in an arsonist’s conflagration that leaves no audit trail of anything that has to do with the June 2023 elections. The career politician should have had decency to show his hands from the outset instead of the mirages and pies he painted on the sky to deceive his APC and other supporters or sympathisers.
Now expect no voter in Sierra Leone in the next 5 or more years to have a say as to who will govern them if they ever bothered to turn up again at a polling station. They will be continued to be treated with the utmost of utter contempt with any modicum of agency left in them completely taken away from by the horse traders Ngor Maada and Korthor Orsamu.
As Orsamu is now a shoo-in for 2028, don’t be surprised to see any opposition to him within the APC being subjugated into silence and submission, and Konneh or any new rogue Chief Electoral Commissioner plucking yet again new numbers from thin air and announce a winner in 2028 without leaving an audit trace.
Even that progenitor of unsavoury tactics and political chicanery in Sierra Leone, late President Siaka Stevens, made sure election results at constituency level were announced. He did all his dirty tricks pre-election day including kidnapping popular politicians on nomination day so that his favoured candidate goes unopposed. I am pretty sure if anyone trawls through the Gazettes of the Sierra Leone Printing Press in New England, he will find those results whether skewed or massaged.
Both Bio and Kamara keep going on and on about peace and national unity but are more or less mute on Justice. I will say those who etched the words peace, unity and justice on Sierra Leone’s national emblem were up to something. Peace, unity and Justice are intricately linked and are not mutually exclusive.
Samura whether cajoled, cowed or coerced into his present situation and position because he professes to be a peacenik, should remember the actions or omissions of that other wimp Gentleman – the late SLPP opposition Leader in the 70s Salia Jusu Sheriff – who enabled and catalyzed the despotic tendencies of former President Siaka Stevens and bequeathed that to that other former soldier-cum-President Momoh.
It is well documented how that eventually provoked a reaction from some gutsy lot of the long oppressed and oppressed grassroots of Sierra Leone. The moral from that our storied past is you should never cut corners on a path towards sustainable peace, unity and Justice and you can not sacrifice one on the altar of the other.
Are we moving full circle?