By Charlie J. Hughes
Sierra Leone’s fifth routine multi-party elections would have been a moment to celebrate a country that Michael Chege (2010) described as coming back from the brink; after 11 years of a brutal civil war.
The atmosphere in the country leading to the June 2023 elections, on the contrary, portends anxiety and frustrations over what Sierra Leone may be headed for.
The anxiety and frustrations have been fuelled by the numerous riots that took place over the last five years, the extremely vile nature of political discussions on social media, incidents of riotous conduct by Parliamentarians in Parliament, the bickering over the Commission of Inquiry, the zero-sum contestations over the 2022 census process, the assassination of a senior Police Officer; and many other sad moments.
There will never be a consensus as to what caused the events that have fuelled anxiety and frustrations over the country’s future. It is normal in any country that practices multi-party politics for citizens to see things differently; and stand the ground for their lenses. The challenge we have in Sierra Leone, however, is the failure to account for the human agency when tormenting political moments occur.
Except in North Korea where the Leader does no harm and all good things come from him, all political events everywhere else, whether tormenting or progressive, are purposive human endeavours.
Promoting accountability for the purposive human endeavours behind the moments of torment in the country is where the biggest opportunity lies today for the international community to help the growth and quality of democracy in Sierra Leone. Unfortunately, this is the area where the international community is letting the country down. The typical approach of the international community during moments of heightened political contestation has been to wait for violence to occur; and come out with boilerplate Press Releases.
The Press Releases would call on all sides to show restraint and engage in dialogue. And where these statements carry caveats that call for accountability, the international community always put the burden on State institutions to exonerate themselves.
It is in these circumstances where ‘actor others’- opposition parties, Civil Society groups, and ordinary folks feel or fear no accountability burden when they deploy disturbing political methods.
The international community, intellectual apologists for miscreants, and rogue Civil Society can choose to pick holes in the Government’s versions of tormenting events, but it cannot be lost on anybody that ‘others’ choose to organise and perpetuate certain actions including dubious narratives, covert and overt violence with a purpose to gain political power. The international community was quick to usefully raise the issue of the deaths around the Makeni, Waterloo, Pademba Road Prisons, and 10th August incidents; but may never reflect that the triggers were pulled in response to precipitates. In failing to interrogate the organisation and implementation of those precipitates with a purpose to secure accountability, the international community is festering impunity in the country.
As Yusuf Bangura (2015) notes, Sierra Leone’s bifurcated party system and voting pattern has led to relatively antagonistic publics that have the potential to disturb the peace and make it harder to pursue and sustain development. Bangura opines that party activists and sympathisers have developed a sense of entitlement, and a zero-sum approach to winning power for ethno-regional benefits.
This is what explains the crudeness and vile nature of the opposition’s desperation over the past five years to gain power. The attention of the international community should be drawn to the new low to which politics in Sierra Leone has fallen; as captured by Campaign for Good Governance in their 2018 elections observation report. In the report, the organisation highlighted the rising phenomenon of ordinary citizens engaging in elections-related violence and other uncivil conducts on their own free-will and by their own means without any mobilisation by a political party. The impotent Press Releases by the international community that call on all sides to show restraint and dialogue can never convey any posture for the accountability of these criminal citizens.
De-incentivising opposition parties and criminal citizens’ resort to dubious political methods is the key area where the international community can now best continue to support the growth and quality of democracy in Sierra Leone. The international community has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building so-called democratic institutions and cultivating responsible and capable citizenship in Sierra Leone.
The rudeness, chaos and despair over politics in the country over the past five years clearly belie the efficiency and efficacy of their investments.
