An election is like a ball game involving the champion and the number one contender. They both come into the race or game exuding confidence that they will win. Surprisingly they both claim that they are the only ones that can make things better for the country (nobody ever asks the Sierra Leonean though, and when they do they end up contacting paid actors). All said and done at the end of the day one of the teams will have to win at the end of 24 June 2023. If President Julius Maada Bio and the SLPP win the election, what should we expect ours and the condition of our economy to be like?
We should expect the worsening of our situation similar to jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire. The people of Sierra Leone would have given the Bio regime the confidence that what they have done these past five years was good and right for the people and economy. You would have given them the legitimacy to continue their pillaging of the economy. Therefore we shouldn’t expect the then SLPP government headed by President Bio to avoid wasteful practices and expenditures seeing that it would be their final term.
At present this regime has not been able to account for tens of millions of dollars of public money entrusted to vote controllers to do their work on behalf of the government and people of Sierra Leone. Despite hiring four highly capable men to run the Ministry of Finance in this his first term in office, the economy appears to be uncontrollable with inflation putting undue strain on the prices of goods and services including an almost daily rise in the exchange rate between the leone and major world currencies.
We cannot but remember the disgraceful and shameful exit of the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone in the person of Professor Kelfalla Kallon (he will definitely include this distasteful episode in his professional life in his memoirs if he is not already writing a book). The professor was in the front row seat on all the questionable handling of public money that was unearthed during the audits into how the government ministries, departments and agencies spent state money.
The economy will be five times as difficult as it is now. Imagine the prices of goods and services that have quadrupled since 2018 to be five times their present costs should the SLPP be allowed to continue their frontal assault on our struggling economy. We know from the past five years that our trained economists are not able to come up with better ways of handling the effects of inflationary pressures on all aspects of our economic life which inadvertently affects our social sense of wellbeing. A hungry man is an angry man but a man that cannot afford to put food on the table for his family will be desperate enough to take to the streets in protest.
There cannot be a healthy democracy in any country where the people are denied their constitutionally guaranteed right to peaceful assembly and protest because our security forces are not adept at handling crowd control and are more prone to shooting first and asking questions later. Therefore public dissent to public decisions, plans and actions would have been stifled. There is therefore the tendency for all out conflict should this regime be allowed to continue for another five year mandate.
If this SLPP regime is given another five year term after 24 June, we should expect the complete capture and tribalisation of the civil service as almost all of the job postings that will be handed down will go to members of the ruling party coming from the south and south east of the country. Already we see that over 70 per cent of new hires by New Direction are from their heartlands or party strongholds. This action would also affect the already bloated government wage bill that has been stretched thin because the government didn’t make enough profits to be able to pay their monthly salaries.
This would require more public debt for which the IMF would be leaning on the government to raise more prices to improve on our tax revenue mobilization efforts to offset the debts. Therefore measures such as subsidies that make life easier for the downtrodden and vulnerable will have to be removed thereby compounding the whole situation. Re-electing the SLPP regime under President Bio for another five year term is akin to jumping from the frying pan into the naked flames without any protection.
The people of Sierra Leone would only have themselves to be blamed should the elections result of 24 June ended up being decided on the side of the incumbency. The level, scale and intensity of public theft and wasteful spending will only get aggravated as vote controllers seeing that this is their last go at the helm of state power will not be able to stop themselves from further wrecking the economy. Complaints by the incoming regime of inheriting a shattered and broken economy would have been justified.
Another area that will be greatly affected should the SLPP win on 24 June will be our representation to parliament, wards, districts and councils. We have been complaining of neglect by our publicly elected and appointed officials, but with the reintroduction of the proportional representation or district bloc system of election we would expect for our elected leaders to try to please the party that gives them the symbol instead of us that do the actual voting that will eventually elect them to office. That said the people of Sierra Leone would have been relegated to rubber stamping anyone the parties approve to run irrespective of if he or she is the people’s choice of a candidate.
We have all been living under collective darkness since becoming an independent country because we have not been able to generate enough power to meet our local energy consumption needs. But in the history of power cuts in Freetown and across the country power failure has not been as rife and rampant as it has been these past five years. We had gotten used to power cuts but they happen so much in a day’s time of late that we now feel the pinch. We should expect a worsening energy crisis going forward and the proliferation of generators across the country. This cost of fuel has killed many an up and coming business since 2018 that didn’t cater for the high cost of generating power outside the public power pool. When will the people and business entities be able to wholly depend on EDSA to provide consistent and reliable power to our homes, schools and places of business?
For those in the know, blame for the rise in recreational drug abuse has been directed at top brass of the Sierra Leone Police and certain operatives allegedly working from State House. While the SLP and State House never responded to such allegations, should this regime continue past 24 June 2023 then we should expect Sierra Leone to denigrate into a narco state with drug abuse and its attendant social issues rising to a crescendo. We should expect a rise in violent crimes by people desperate to get their fix but lacking the money to procure.
In conclusion, giving the SLPP a further five year mandate will be like Pharaoh giving the enslaved Israelites more responsibilities without the facilities; we will make more bricks without mortar, meaning all our efforts will end up being meaningless as they will fail to make an impact. We would be forced as a people to perform daily miracles to survive.