With the way the current political drama is playing out in Sierra Leone, it has dawned on the people that it once again boils down to a matter of choice – your choice of candidate and party that reflects your experiences these past five years under the New Direction regime.
The elections slated for 24 June 2023 have reached a crescendo. With so many confusing messages, so many claims and allegations and counter claims and counter allegations, with the fear and visible threat of state sponsored violence, and people being pulled back and forth by the contending parties, which boils down to a showdown between the ruling SLPP and the main opposition APC, the people are left with one alternative: vote according to all you have experienced since 2018.
The 24 June elections will see those who have benefitted or have enjoyed from the plans and actions of the ruling party since 2018 voting for the SLPP while those that have experienced nothing but hardship including violence from state security, saying they plan to vote for Mama Salone. Interestingly politicians seeking election and re-election on 24 June are challenging the people to vote this way during this and all elections going forward.
The people have also agreed that voting this way is the only way they can hold nonperforming regimes and politicians to task and keep them on their performance toes.
The people of Sierra Leone say for 24 June 2023 they find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place regarding the two main political forces in the country, SLPP and APC. They said choosing one over the other is like choosing between the lesser of two evils. But since there is no alternative third force political party with the seriousness and institutions to take on either the APC or SLPP, they will have to vote in the interest of the nation.
To their supporters and die hard members, the New Direction regime has done all they promised in their 2018 campaign manifesto. After their surprise victory at the 2018 polls, many people hailing from the southeast of Sierra Leone belonging to the Mende-Sherbro tribal family benefitted with job postings. Many got government jobs and contracts for their support to the party.
There is also the PAOPA faction of the SLPP that is rumoured to be have been given the lion’s share of government posts. Pay for some of these government positions as mundane as office assistant outstripped pay for people with masters and other professional degrees heading public institutions such as prisons, the military and many of our government and government assisted schools.
According to these set of supporters of President Bio he should be re-elected to continue the fine work he started in 2018 that were thwarted by global economic, political (military/war) and health issues. They blamed all the governance issues people have been complaining about including but not limited to alleged corruption, state sponsored violence using state security and party gangsters, financial leakages, the runaway hikes in the prices of goods and services and the exchange rate between the leone and US dollar, on flimsy excuses those who said they have been suffering could not fathom due to this regime’s poor handling of the reins of statecraft.
Bio’s supporters including ranking members of other parties that have crossed over to the SLPP, say he deserves another chance and that they will give him the mandate. They said he had a slow start due to external pressures, and that despite all that have happened since 2018, President Bio is on the rebound and has been making serious inroads into opposition strongholds, even taking development with promises of more development to such places as Port Loko and Kambia. These supporters of the president are calling on likeminded Sierra Leoneans to do likewise and get Bio re-elected.
However, on the other hand are those who said President Bio and his New Direction technocrats have failed the people of Sierra Leone by how recklessly they considered statecraft including the many instances of alleged corruption going as high as the offices of the president, vice president and first lady, which is a new government institution established by the President Bio regime that has resulted to his wife receiving state and donor money which she allegedly squandered on unintended purposes. She and others accused of corruption are yet to face public sanction from either the anticorruption commission or the president. The president still wants proof of their wrongdoings for the ACC to take action.
The people who complained of hardships say President Bio has failed them. They said the purported and hailed New Direction is actually a bastardisation of all the directions this country had been taken in, resulting to this regime having the unenviable distinction of being the most corrupt since we started keeping records. They said with PAOPA now talking about the “Right Direction” means that we had been going in the wrong direction since 2018.
Renaming their 2023 campaign to reflect a change in direction is an obvious admission of failure in the original direction as planned by the SLPP, they joked. Now that the New Direction has failed, the people who said they will vote for Mama Salone intimated that they will determine the “right direction” for Sierra Leone by replacing members of the New Direction with those of the Right Direction.
People voting for Mama Salone said the problem with Sierra Leone is Sierra Leonean citizens. They said regardless of what government regimes do, the people cannot only undo them they can go as far as replacing the nonperforming government with another that will do their bidding. Since the SLPP regime under President Bio has failed to do the needful and necessary since 2018, they said it is now a bit too late for him to start showing some seriousness about delivering according to the people’s taste and expectations with the elections only weeks away.
Meanwhile, PAOPA is facing a multifarious assault on its re-election chances with people within PAOPA reportedly planning to vote for the APC, citing PAOPA as a faction of the SLPP that has sidelined many green-blooded SLPP supporters, with many out of work since 2018. The ruling party government is also facing a serious threat of fallout due to members of the SLPP complaining they will switch to the APC.
Therefore there is really no need for anyone to die or get injured on 24 June. If people are respected and accorded their rights to freedom of association and choice, then election day will be as it should be: a choice between those who have had their needs met these past five years by the ruling regime versus those who said President Bio didn’t do enough to meet their expectations of his government based on his 2018 manifesto when juxtaposed to how they have performed.
The 24 June election according to the supporters of the ruling and main opposition parties is the SLPP versus the people of Sierra Leone. The APC is expected to be a shoe-in replacement for the incumbent SLPP, but with them not having a manifesto out and with the little room to manoeuvre before Election Day to make campaign visits as far and wide as President Bio and his surrogates had with all these working visits cum campaign and launching ceremonies, then all eyes are on Sierra Leone to see if the citizens will do as they have been complaining, or will we see a surprise or unexpected victory by the ruling party government?