By Felix Khonte
As we are preparing to celebrate, or should I call it (commemorate), as there is nothing like celebration is foreseeable in our present look of things as a nation. First, let me draw the attention of those who do not know the differences between celebration and commemoration. In celebrations, people congregate in joyful moods and atmospheres to mark a special day or event with lots of food, drinks and fanfare between families and friends. Like we used to celebrate Christmas or Easter, for the Christians, or Pray Day for the Muslims, after the month long Ramadan fasting. Whilst in commemoration, it is just a simple reminder of some important events that have passed, and needs to be brought to the attention of people who were present, or, those that were not fortunate to witness that important event, to reflect their minds, on how those events were planned and promulgated.
The emergence of Sierra Leone as a sovereign state, with Queen Elizabeth the second as its head, after independence in 1961, and becoming a republic on 19th April 1971, had not brought the high developmental expectations the citizens were anticipating. The first general elections were held in 1962, and Sir Milton Margai of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party became the first Prime Minister of independent Sierra Leone. The All Peoples Congress Party of Siaka Stevens became the most organized opposition. During Milton Margai’s short reign, the country enjoyed relative peace and stability, and there was unity and freedom for all. People migrated from one part of the country to the other especially in those diamond rich areas to find their living. Sir Albert Margai, of living memory, who ushered the country to independence, died on 28th April 1964.
After the death of Sir Milton Margai, his half- brother Albert Margai took over the governance of the country as the second prime minister on 29th April 1964. He attempted to remove the system of democratic governance as enshrined in multi-party democracy. He believed that this would encourage politicians to accentuate the ethnic differences within the state and threaten the viability of Sierra Leone as a country. On 4th August 1964, Albert Margai changed the currency from the British West African Pound to the Leone, a decimal legal tender roughly equivalent to half a pound sterling at the time. He also built the Bank of Sierra Leone and established the national central bank.
Unlike his elder half- brother, Albert Margai was highly criticized during his tenure as Prime Minister. He had a penchant for extravagant pageantry and was accused of corruption and a policy of affirmative action in favor of the Mende tribe. The tantrum-prone prime minister was nicknamed “AKPATA”, a Mende word meaning “our wild, fat man”. He was also fondly called “Big Albert and African Albert by his kinsmen. Within a short period of his rule, he sought to make the army a predominantly Mende entity.
In 1966, after the district council elections, he started nursing the ambition of turning the country to a one party state as he had wanted to entrench himself permanently in office. His actions over the next few months confirmed the suspicions of his critics. He wanted to consolidate his position and sought to destroy all opposition that stood as a stumbling block to his agenda. After failing on the one party agenda, he again undertook a new campaign to turn the country to a Republican Status. Here again he found himself stalled by the constitutional “straight jacket” of the independence constitution. This arrangement made for 2/3 majority for any enactment or amendment of the independent constitution.
Up until 1967 general elections, Sierra Leone had been an exemplary democratic post-colonial state. However, the campaign strategies of Albert Margai would surface after this trend. He was against any candidate from the opposition running against candidates from his own party. He refused to dignify accusations of misuse of office and corruption with high handed response by introducing the “PUBLIC ORDER ACT”. Riots broke out throughout the country and he declared a state of emergency.
In the ensuing general elections of 1967, Albert Margai of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party lost to Siaka Stevens of the All Peoples Congress by a minor parliamentary majority. Mr. Siaka Stevens was about to be sworn in as the new prime minister of Sierra Leone by the Governor General, Sir Henry Light-Foot Boston, when suddenly Margai’s friend and tribes man, Brigadier David Linsang; materialized on the scene and placed the governor general and Siaka Stevens under gun point. He arrested them and took over power, suspended the constitution and declared martial law, dismissed the elections results on the grounds that the determination of the office should await the election of tribal representatives in the house mostly from “Mende chiefdoms in the south east.”
Few days later, a group of senior military officers overrode this action by seizing control of the de-facto government on the 23rd March 1968. They arrested Brigadier Lansana and invited Colonel Andrew Juxon Smith as the chairman of the “National Reformation Council”, (NRC). The NRC in turn was overthrown on the 18th April 1968 by a group of young sergeants who called their movement the “Anti-Corruption Revolutionary Movement” (ACRM).They invited Brigadier John Bangura as their head. “THE MILITARY SET UP AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ELECTIONS OUTCOME, AND IT BECAME CLEAR THAT SIAKA PROBLN STEVENS HAD ACTUALLY WON THOSE ELECTIONS. THERFORE, THEY RECALLED SIAKA STEVENS FROM GUINEA, WHERE HE HAD TAKEN REFUGE, AND HE WAS DUELY SWORN IN AS THE THIRD PRIME MINISTER OF NEWLY INDEPENDENCT SIERRA LEONE, ON THE 22ND APRIL 1968, BY BRIGADIER JOHN BANGURA”.
Siaka Stevens assumed power again with great deal of promises and ambition. Much trust was placed on him as he championed multi-party politics during his campaigns. Upon his assumption as the third prime minister of newly independent Sierra Leone, he drove the SLPP from competitive politics using violence and intimidation. To gain the support of the military, Stevens retained Brigadier John Bangura as head of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces.
In 1971, Sierra Leone was declared a republic with Chief Justice COE Cole as the first “ceremonial president”, who in turn swore in Siaka Stevens the following day as the first “executive president” of the Republic of Sierra Leone. On 19th April 1978, the APC dominated parliament approved a new constitution, making Sierra Leone a one party state. The stage managed referendum made the APC the only legal political party in Sierra Leone as the opposition has been silenced and suppressed, and therefore paved the way for most of them to join the band wagon of Siaka Stevens and the APC.
Siaka Stevens continued his dictatorial policies until in 1985, when he chose the army commander Major-General Joseph Saidu Momoh to succeed him, bypassing his vice-president, Sorie Ibrahim Koroma. A referendum was conducted on the 8th October 1985 under a one party system. And on 28th November 1985, Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh was elected as the second president of Sierra Leone.
He took up the leadership of the country amidst turbulent times when people were disgusted with the one party system of government. After deep reflections on the way things were going in the country, he decided to summon all political actors in the country, with civil society and human rights activists to chart the way forward to return the country to multi-party democracy. Dr. Peter Tucker, Dr. Abdulai Conteh, two senior seasoned luminaries were nominated to head the constitutional review committee to return the country to multi-party democracy. The work of the committee was at the tail end of the process when disruptions took place in the country.
March 23rd could be marked as the saddest and most destructive months in the history of the country. It was the month that the so called rebel leader called Foday Saybana Sankoh launched his attack in Sierra Leone from a faraway village called Bomarun, in Kailahun district, eastern Sierra Leone. His rebel movement the “Revolutionary United Front” ravaged the country for eleven years in a senseless war that was referred to as one of the bloodiest in the continent.
On 29th April 1992, a group of young lieutenants from the war front overran the capital and over threw the APC government of President Joseph Momoh. The coup leader, Captain Valentine Strasser took control of the affairs of the country. Within that short period of their coming to power, they committed extra-judicial killings of 29 people, including that of James Bambay Kamara, the first Inspector General of Police. And on 16th January 1996, Captain Julius Maada Bio, who was the Deputy to Captain Strasser staged a palace coup and over threw his boss.
Bio’s coup was short lived as people wanted to see civilian democratic rule in the country. There were calls for elections to be conducted so that the country can return again to civilian rule. Bio had wanted to hold on to power, but civil society and all walks of life became defiant and called for the return to civilian rule. In the process, came the famous “Bintumani one”. In that gathering, it was agreed that the elections must go on even though the war was still going on in the hinter land of the country. “Elections before Peace became the topic of the day.
General and presidential elections were held in Sierra Leone on the 26th and 27th February 1996. No candidate secured the 55 percent threshold as stipulated by the 1991 constitution to be declared as the winner of the presidential elections. A runoff was conducted between Alhaji Ahmed Tejan Kabba of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party, SLPP and Dr. John Karefa- Smart of the United National Peoples Party, UNPP on the 15th March 1996. Tejan Kabba was declared the winner of the run-off elections by the returning officer, Dr. James Jonah. Bio handed over power to president-elect Alhaji Tejan Kabba and went on a self-imposed exile to the United States. It was rumored that he emptied the coffers at the central bank and left the country in red.
President Kabba took over the reins of the country at a time the war intensified and the rebels took control of the entire eastern region, including the diamond rich Kono District. President Kabba made his defense Minister Chief Hinga Norman to recruit local fighters from mostly his Mende tribe known as the “Kamajors”. And there was this talk that was making the rounds that he was planning of disbanding the military in replacement of the local fighters as the soldiers had lost their morals and were branded as ‘Sobels’.
This did not go down well within the ranks of the military, and on 25th May1997, Corporal Tamba Gborie and others, broke into the Pademba Road Prisons and staged a coup that ousted President Tejan Kabba. They freed Major Johnny Paul Koroma, who was on a death row and made him to lead the revolution known as the “Armed Forces Revolutionary Council”, AFRC. His rule lasted for nine months after he joined forces with the RUF fighters of Foday Sankoh.
Tejan Kabba was re-instated as president of Sierra Leone by “ECOMOG” (Economic Community Monitoring Group), the military wing of the sub-regional body ECOWAS,(Economic Commission Of West African States) on 22nd April 1998. Thousands of lives were lost in the city and other parts of the country during the intervention in defence of restoring democracy. His presidency marked the dawn of a new Sierra Leone which included the end of the civil war in 2002, a focus on fostering national unity and reconciliation, trust on government, peace, stability, and the improvement in relations with other governments and countries.
Then the rebranding and restructuring of the armed forces through the “International Military and Technical Training, (IMATT) was initiated, co-sponsored by the European Union and Britain. And in 1999, the British government, through the Common Wealth assigned a retired senior police officer, Keith Biddle to come and retrain the police force, including senior officers and branded it a “force for good”. President Tejan Kabba’s second term mandate ended in 2007 and handed over power to Ernest Koroma of the APC.
Ernest Koroma ruled for two terms and his mandate ended in 2018, who handed over power to the current president Bio under clandestine arrangements in the name of regime change. Those elections were clearly won by Dr. Samura Kamara of the All Peoples Congress, but Ernest Koroma decided the other way out. He openly apologized to his party members that he was sorry but promised to bring the party back to power in 2023. “HE DIDN’T!”
What has been happening since 2018 when Bio came to power, UNIMAGINABLE! He promised to fight corruption to the last breath of his life, is it true? The answer is no. Human rights violations have been in the increase since 2018. Indiscriminate arrest and detention of suspected opponents have been in the rise. There have been spates of killings in the North-West regions with no investigations mounted to bring to light those responsible for those acts.
How about our gate-keepers, our moral guarantors, human rights activists: Campaign for good governance, National Democratic Institute, National commission for democracy and human rights, Institute for governance reform, Independent commission for peace and national cohesion, Office of national security(ONS), Inter-religious council, (IRC), Political parties regulation commission(PPRC),The press both electronics and print media, Civil society organizations (CSO’s), the Parliamentarians, the Judiciary, Sierra Leone Labour Congress, Teachers Union, The Anti-Corruption Commission, The military that are supposed to defend the constitution in times of crises as it is prevailing now, the Police cannot conduct investigations fairly.
What is here to celebrate at 64? As a nation, we have gone through trying times, difficult times, ugly times, and furious times since we cried for independence from our colonial masters in 1961. But the marriage of “inconvenience” that was brokered between former President Koroma, and President Bio in 2018, is becoming the greatest disaster that is about to slaughter our democracy, and is posing a threat to the very fabrics of good governance! The democracy that thousands of people lost their lives to maintain it in 1998, is slowly been threatened by these two people. All the above mentioned institutions have very pivotal roles to play to stabilize the unforeseen consequences, but they remain quiet: STATE CAPTURE? BUT MIND YOU, THE PEOPLE’S POWER IS GREATER THAN THE PEOPLE IN POWER!!! God save mama and papa Salone from bad politicians in Jesus Mighty Name, AMEN!!!