By A. K. Vandi (kaikpanda@gmail.com)
I have read, very carefully, the forty-eight-page “Green Paper on the Proposed Peace and National Cohesion Commission for Sierra Leone” produced by the Office of the Chief Minister at State House. I am impressed not only with the details of the proposal but with the justifications for pursuing peace as the foundation for national unity and development. There is no gainsay that peace is fundamental to the attainment of all of our national aspirations. The quest for peace is vital to the prevention of another war in Sierra Leone. War, as experientially observed by Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, is “the sum of all evils.” Only those who do not know, or have forgotten, the horrors of war “speak of war or threaten” their country with war. Those of us who lived the horrors of the twin wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone will do whatever to prevent another war. But Sierra Leone is no longer at war, thanks to the sacrificial intervention of our ECOWAS subregion and the United Nations for the unrepayable investments they made to secure our peace. We are forever grateful for what they did in both countries.
At the end of the war in Sierra Leone, the international community established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to investigate the causes of the war, and to make recommendations to mitigate or prevent future occurrence. Most people have read the TRC report but, for the benefit of readers, I have inserted some of the key findings below:
- “The Commission finds in particular that the term of government under the All People’s Congress (APC), particularly during the reign of President Siaka Stevens (1969 – 1985), was one that suppressed any semblance of opposition. The creation of a one-party state effectively neutralized all checks and balances on the exercise of executive power. The one-party state systematically closed down avenues for open debate and democratic activity.
- “By the time of the conflict, successive [APC] regimes had rendered the country devoid of governmental accountability. Institutions such as the judiciary and civil society had become mere pawns in the hands of the executive. Parliament proved itself to be a servile agent of the executive, lacking courage and determination to resist tyranny.
- “The Commission finds that all institutions of oversight must accept responsibility for the effective entrenchment of dictatorship and bad governance that laid the grounds for war.
- “There were no significant acts of resistance to the excesses of the system. Civil society was largely co-opted into the very same system. Organs or agents of the APC Government quickly crushed the few who did stand up to totalitarianism. In short, there were no real restraints on the executive. The rule of law was well and truly dead. Those in power became a law unto themselves.
- “The signs of the impending human catastrophe were plain to see. The Provinces had been almost totally sidelined through the centralisation of political and economic power in Freetown. Local government was in demise across the country. Chiefs and traditional structures did little more than the bidding of the power base in Freetown. Regions and ethnic groups were polarised by the contrasting treatments they were afforded.
- “It had become commonplace for elections to be rigged. Elections were associated with campaigns of intimidation and violence often carried out by thugs who were employed by party bosses and given drugs to fuel their waywardness.
- “Historically, the conduct of the political elite, while in power was largely the same, regardless of which political party was in power. Corruption in the judiciary and public sector was rife. The people had lost all faith in the ruling class to act with integrity and to deliver basic services to the nation.”
If nothing else, these summary findings, accusatory as they are, should have claimed the attention of the APC leadership, particularly former president Ernest Bai Koroma who completed the first cycle of a democratic transfer of power after the war. When in 2011 President Koroma joined other regional leaders in Ivory Coast to persuade former president Laurent Gbagbo to relinquish power to prevent bloodshed in that country, some of us were elated with a sense of pride that, finally, the APC had produced a statesman for Sierra Leone to be respected as a regional player. But President Koroma fell back, succumbed to the diehard fringe elements of his tribe and party, and put on steroids Siaka Steven’s initial agenda of regional and intertribal conflict as tools of politics. He would go on to appoint the most regionally and tribally unbalanced cabinet, and the most corrupt administration in the history of our country, with complete indifference to the stinging indictments of his APC party by the TRC. After trying unsuccessfully to extend his term unconstitutionally, Ernest Bai Koroma submitted unwillingly to the rule of law and called the elections of 2018.
The SLPP did not win the 2018 presidential election solely on the basis of the popularity of its candidate Julius Maada Bio; we won because the greater majority of Sierra Leoneans were disenchanted with President Ernest Bai Koroma and the APC. Not only that President Koroma and the APC reneged on nearly all of their campaign promises, they polarised the country even more than previously, and looted the country’s coffers with reckless flippancy while the people suffered. The mismanagement of Ebola funds and the lack of empathy for victims of the mudslides were the final straws that doomed the APC into defeat. In the aftermath of that defeat, Mr. Koroma and his APC failed, yet again, to yield to the call of political wisdom and patriotism. Instead of using the indictment of the people to reform, Mr. Koroma and the APC embarked on a calculated effort to undermine the newly elected SLPP administration and to sabotage the peace and stability of the country. Prior to the elections, the APC submitted names of parliamentary candidates to the National Elections Commission in full cognizance of those candidates being paid from the Consolidated Funds, in a flagrant contravention of the law. Mr. Koroma did not only hijack the APC and assumed powers that even Siaka Stevens did not have, he also incorporated state institutions into an unprecedented miasma of public impropriety. The phrase, “orders from above,” was adopted at all levels of government including the Judiciary, Parliament and state security institutions, similar to the conditions cited by the TRC as causes of the civil war. Because of his grip on the institutions of government, Mr. Koroma and the APC did not expect the APC to lose the elections to the SLPP and, by extension, they did not expect to be held accountable for the massive corruption they engaged in, especially during the waning years of their administration. Mr. Koroma and his APC failed to understand the dynamics of social change and the determination of Sierra Leoneans to aspire for a better life for themselves and their children, regardless of tribe and region. It was therefore a jolt to the APC when the SLPP performed better than expected in some northern districts and the Western Area, bastions of APC support. It was a mandate of the people to the SLPP to institute reforms, especially accountability in government.
True to that mandate, the SLPP embarked on reforming government operations – revenue collection was streamlined and consolidated to assure accountability; the Anti-Corruption Commission was reconstituted and empowered; the number of officials in government delegations for foreign travel was reduced; foreign travel by government officials was limited by necessity; and most importantly, Commissions of Inquiry were established to investigate improprieties committed by the Koroma-APC administration. The people of Sierra Leone were beginning to appreciate the kind of discipline they had not seen in over a decade of APC rule. Confidence was being restored in the system once more, and Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad began to hope for the better.
To avoid accountability, the former president and his party have embarked on a series of unpatriotic activities intended to create chaos and sabotage the government. Mr. Koroma himself has engaged in behaviors that are inimical to the stature of a retired statesman, behaving as if he was still in power, even as he continues as chairman-for-life of the APC, instead of retiring and giving a new generation of leaders the opportunity to reform their party. Despite questionable pacification of corrupt former APC officials of government by the current SLPP administration, Mr. Koroma and his cohorts have continued to challenge the legitimacy of the elected Government of Sierra Leone, disrupted Parliament, incited their supporters to stage spontaneous and unauthorized demonstrations around Parliament and State House, and engaged in nefarious social media campaigns, in many instances threatening our country with war and calling for the outright overthrow of the elected government of the Republic. These are some of the very things to which the TRC alluded in its findings as causes of the war. Has the APC learned anything from that report? What is Mr. Koroma and the APC fighting for? Is it for Sierra Leone or the few powerful people at the leadership of the party? When will Mr. Koroma and the fringe elements in the APC realize that love for country is a moral and legal obligation? I have good friends in the APC who tell me that they are against what former president Koroma and his cohorts are doing to their party and to the country; they want to give peace a chance; they want to reform their party to make it responsive to the people, but they are too afraid to speak out.
The SLPP administration, on the other hand, has become distracted by the ramblings and machinations of the APC, and has shifted focus away from the advances we made in the past year. There appears to be a jostling for influence and positions within the administration; and the discipline we saw in the first year has begun to diminish as we see decisions that are incongruent with the party’s 2018 election manifesto, the New Direction. One such decision is this Bintumani-III national conference and the series of follow-up events that may eventually culminate into the proposed Peace and National Cohesion Commission. There is no Sierra Leonean who does not desire peace for our country; but what the people desire the most now is justice; the ability to send their children to school and put food on the table; access to good healthcare, clean drinking water, and the opportunity of the dignity of work. If Bintumani-III is truly about peace, then let us work for that peace by seeking justice for the people. It has been argued that if we love peace, we should “hate injustice, hate greed [and] tyranny.” In the past months, we have seen the APC display an unflattering aversion to the rule of law – they knowingly fielded parliamentary candidates who were being paid from the Consolidated Funds; now they do not want to be held accountable; they misappropriated and converted government resources to their personal uses, now they do not want to face the Commissions of Inquiry. While other political parties are participating in the affairs of the country with political maturity, the APC are throwing tantrums and threatening the peace and stability of our country. And the SLPP administration seems to be cowering to their antics with a call for a peace conference.
Sierra Leone is not at war. We have had multiple democratic and peaceful transfers of power since the end of the war. This means that the fundamental institutions of our nascent democracy are working, albeit not perfectly. What is needed now is to strengthen those institutions to accord them the functionality they need to sustain our democracy. The call for a Bintumani-III in the wake of one party’s threat to destabilize our hard-won peace, because they do not want to conform to the norms of common decency, amounts to a capitulation, and it sets a bad precedent. The institutions of peace and national cohesion, as outlined and envisioned in the “Green Paper,” can be created and made operational without wasting our meager resources on Bintumani-III. Take pride in what we have accomplished in this past year; strengthen the institutions of our young democracy to hold everyone accountable to the laws of the land; and let justice prevail. Stay focused on the promises we made to the people and address with a sense of urgency the bread and butter issues that are of primary concern to the people. If we do these things, we have nothing to fear because these are the prerogatives of the people. A national peace effort is laudable but the timing is politically quixotic.