The Ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) is gradually crumbling from within as the party battles with its own members. Four honourable members in parliament are in hot waters for acts SLPP leadership viewed contrary to the values of the party.
Two of the four members, honourables Hindolo Moiwo Ngevao and Ibrahim Tawa Conteh representing constituencies in Bo and Freetown respectively stand close to the party’s exit door while the other two, honourables Momoh Bockarie and Billo Sow also are about to follow suit.
Suspension has been slammed on the first two while investigations are underway for the second pair.
The matters against the four MP’s means they are not permitted by law to take part in any parliamentary proceedings until the party and parliamentary leadership says otherwise.
The four members, by all indications, stand to lose the party’s favour owing to an alleged trumpeting of unverified allegations of corruption against the leadership of parliament and the alleged use of derogatory languages.
Hon Ngevao was accused to have made corruption allegations against parliament on the global media platform, BBC. The member of parliament made it clear on one of BBC’s popular programme that parliament was corrupt.
The “Unverified allegation” of corruption against parliament did not go down well with the parliamentary leadership. The collective view of most parliamentarians on the corruption allegation holds that it can smear the reputation of not only parliament but also the ‘New Direction’ Government.
The suspension of Hon. Conteh had bearing with allegation he made against government which bothers on interfering with his oversight work.
The SLPP MP had cause to resign in September this year from his seat in the TAC after alleging that the leadership of parliament had unjustifiably blocked his probe of the Minister of Information and Communication, Mohamed Rado Swarray over the unbundling of the Sierra Leone Cable Ltd.
“My committee sitting was interrupted during the probe of the Information Minister’s conflicting status report submitted to the committee on the unbundling of the Sierra Leone Cable,” Hon Conteh accused parliament.
Corruption allegations against parliament are fastly becoming a recurrent phenomenon in the country’s body politic.
The suspended Hon Conteh has quite previously embarked in allegations and counter allegations of corruption between him and the Clerk of Parliament, Hon. Paran Tarawallie. The allegations were aired by one of the country’s most dominant radio stations, Radio Democracy in its popular programme ‘Good Morning Salone.’
The allegations compelled Sierra Leoneans to call on the country’s graft agency, the Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate.
Allegations of corruption against parliament by its honourable members set in motion a trail of a number of scathing reports directed to the law-making institution by local and international Civil Society Organisations (CSO’s). A consortium of three local CSO’s, Centre For Accountability and Rule of Law, Restless Development and Christian Aid recently tagged parliament as the second most corrupt public institution in Sierra Leone.
Owing to the CSO’s allegation, parliament’s reputation was again put under the greatest test for which the law-making body expressed its dissatisfaction and frustration.
By the time parliament reeled of the effect of the damaging corruption report of the CSO, an international corruption report also came out against the institution. Corruption watchdog in Africa, the Afro-Barometre report also labeled parliament as the second most corrupt.
The report also went a long way to undermine parliamentary authority in light of the status enjoyed by parliament as the country’s ‘supreme legislative authority.’
In a recent press release, Speaker of parliament, Dr Abass Chernoh Bundu challenged the credibility of the DFID-sponsored perception survey conducted by the three CSO’s.
Dr Bundu premised his challenge on the sample frame used by the researchers that led them to the conclusion that parliament was the second most corrupt.
He referred to the allegation of corruption against parliament as one that is akin to treason. The case for honourables Bockarie and Sow had to do with the use of invectives against the leader of the female caucus.
The two MP’s are now subject to investigations by the Ethics and privilege committee in parliament. As cases hang over the four SLPP MP’s, many Sierra Leoneans have expressed different opinions about the state of SLPP in the face of negative factors that hunt the party.
Some argue that the suspension of parliamentarians is not in the interest of the party as the APC now has edge over the SLPP in parliament. The 2023 elections are fastly approaching, and the SLPP seems not properly seated in the driving seat as most of the promises the party has made remain unfulfilled.
National Cohesion, power Supply, health services, safe drinking water, improved agriculture among others were prominent promises made by the SLPP in the campaign period.
In the sphere of national cohesion, most Sierra Leoneans say the party has failed miserably considering the security threats confronting the country. Political tension between the two main parties, SLPP and APC continues to worsen an already volatile situation.
Violence between the two parties, most times, showcase during elections adding to the notoriety the country had achieved for having youths with a penchant for ephemeral intervention into politics as thugs. Political violence recently engulfed the Western Rural district precisely Constituency 110 where elections materials were destroyed with impunity.
Those alleged to have perpetrated the brutal acts have a field day as none was made to face justice. The only decision government took was to cancel the elections, and to date no winner has been announced leaving the people in the constituency without a representative.
The Northern town of Kabala also saw violence of a grand scale when a bye-election for a parliamentary seat was hotly contested in that part of the country. Although the APC won, the elections ended in bloodshed as a great number of those who took part in it related different stories of brutality they suffered in the hands of party operatives.
The brutality in political circles was also replicated in other social circles evidenced by the pockets of thuggery seen in Lunsar and Tombo towns in the North and Western Rural districts respectively.
Apart from its apparent failure in the national cohesion factor, SLPP still grapples with the problem of electricity. Most communities in Sierra Leone including Freetown still struggle to see light with Bo city in the south as a classic example. As if the problem had reached an unbearable degree, residents in Bo have criticised the Minister of Energy and Power few days back and called on the President to relieve him of his ministerial duty.
But, answer to the question of relieving the minister is yet to be answered by government, and no one knows when it will be answered.
The frequent power outages is reminiscent of a situation that prevailed in the days of Tejan Kabba SLPP when most residents had cause to use generators called ‘Kabba Tigers’ to power their houses.
In the agricultural sector, impressive inroads are yet to be recorded as agricultural investment in the Tomabom and Gbondapi Bolilands still remains on paper.
The situation prevailing in the sphere of agriculture is nothing to write home about considering the huge sums of money government spends on food imports.
The list of failings is too long to be exhausted, and the trumpeting of allegations against members of parliament makes the situation more dangerous. If the situation is not quickly reversed in parliament, it would be quite difficult for SLPP to see headway in the passage of controversial bills and policies.
Surely, SLPP would also be hunted in the polls should the MP’s remain suspended.