It is only the All People’s Congress (APC) and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) that need another form of democracy.
To these two parties, democracy has two sets of meaning: one that is practiced within the national politics, having the national convention and the internal and intra-party democracy.
We all know that the rule of law, that prescribes morality, fairness and equality, is the bedrock of the meaning of democracy, but party democracy, for these two partners, often overrides equity especially when desperation and anger step in.
Let me digress a little bit. Before March 2017, ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma is quoted as saying that he was going into retirement, actually from national and party politics. Our guess was that we would have seen the grey hair man relaxing in his bungalow’s armchair enjoying his morning breakfast with hot pepper soup and ‘lafidi’ grinded with bush meat and rice, while his grandsons and daughters play around. But no he needs more of the ones he missed out to do, he now realises few bad guys or sycophants that were around him ‘vuvuzelling’ what the Pa wanted to hear.
All these happened before the last ill-fated elections. So who is to be blamed? Now even when the term of office for the entire National Executive Council has expired people are invoking item 13 of the minutes of the last meeting. You know, there is the saying that, “the problems of the younger generations is, they have failed to read the minutes of the last meeting.” The minutes of that last meeting weere never written.
This scenario that is hunting the APC may generate into the creation of factions and hardliners or ethnic, sectional divisions that may be difficult to hold.
As for the SLPP, they will never agree to their faults. Pride, stubbornness and reactivate nature to coming events are the order of the day. We know that the present political ideology, manufactured by the Bio regime, is to rebrand Sierra Leone through academic fields.
Pa Sheriff said that “No to book mek sense, na sense mek book.” You can never succeed in this country’s political dispensation using elitism and class culture. This is just because the illiteracy rate is 60%. And because the people’s horizon does not go as far as knowing what really operates in political governance, rumours and false news are more reliable.
Elitism has failed Africa. Western form of education has been grossly undermined and misused by our very selves. Just see a small boy from the least village who has completed his basic education. The hoe and cutlass are never in his diary. He craves for the blue-collar job. To rebrand a society (CHANGE) is not a 50 year deal, you need to have knowledge of what is missing- where are we, and where are we to go.
Coming back to our stand point, Sierra Leone needs another form of democracy where the ruling government marshals the state,
-have a vibrant information and communication means to let the people be aware of their duty to the state. But not to laissez-faire
-Granting opportunities to those who aspire
– avoid nepotism
– maintain discipline
-put up structures (local court system, market places, traffic, health, recreational point, etc) that could respond to the needs of the people.
– design international standards for City Councils
-be competitive with other cities, etc.
Our democracy must be rigid to forestall too much interference from the Western type democracy, because the government of the day is sitting and managing different ethnic groups.