President Julius Maada Bio’s leadership is unorthodox in the history of the presidents of Sierra Leone and has been blamed for promoting the reasons and issues that continue to divide the nation, especially on his hiring practices and his many failed electoral promises that continue to fail one after the other, after what was seen as promising starts.
But his detractors in the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) have admitted that president Bio has been a better leader than what the APC has been delivering for the past two electoral cycles. In the game of politics, nothing matters than delivering on one’s campaign promises and for the success of your political party and its agenda.
“Sad to say that although president Bio has failed to deliver on his campaign promises to make Sierra Leone a better country for the citizens and residents of this country, he continues to deliver for his party, for which those that are benefitting from him are asking for more. He has proven to be a better leader than those we have been presenting as the main opposition. Before Bio arrived back on the scene in 2018, the SLPP (Sierra Leone Peoples Party) had been in the political wilderness for 11 years and in desperate need of someone to rescue the party. Think about how Bio maneuverer his way back to the top of the party to contest in 2018. After he succeeded in the intraparty fight and won the SLPP flag, after his promises in the 2018 manifesto promising the Free Quality Education, anticorruption fight and blocking financial leakages, the first thing he did after he won the election was to institute commissions of inquiries into the spending habits of past government officials in the previous APC government headed by President Ernest Bai Koroma,” said an APC executive that spoke to Nightwatch.
The ranking opposition executive said although “president Bio’s promises to the people were scams”, he nonetheless succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the people, just enough to get them to elect him over someone with a proven track record in public leadership like Dr Samura Kamara.
He said president Bio started showing that he was a leader with a plan by allowing for the establishment of the commissions of inquiry (COIs), through which he was able to brutalise and deflate opposition leaders who were all made quiet as a result and failed to speak out against Bio and his subordinates’ excesses in government.
“President Bio did many things against the procedures and rules that govern his actions as a president but no one in the APC was able to stand up and speak out against them because they have to consider that they had pending matters in the white paper that Bio used as a sword of Damocles against anyone in the APC that should have been able to inform the nation about how the president and his underlings were running the government. From the setting up of the commissions of inquiry, the imposition of the speaker without a majority in Parliament, the imposition of the chief electoral commissioner of the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone, the passing of bad laws that were passed not for implementation but strictly to weaken the opposition, and so much more. But throughout all of them, no one in the APC was able to speak out except the expected weak press releases from the APC without a familiar face to continue denouncing what the president was doing,” continued the opposition executive.
The first term regime of president Bio’s presented ample scenarios for the main opposition leaders and executives to use to expose to the electorate why they should not re-elect president Bio. From the brutal suppression of protesters who were shot and killed during protest actions (at Tombo, Mile 98, Tonko Limba, Makeni, Koidu, Lunsar, on 10 August 2022, 11 September 2023 and at Pademba Road Prison) to the disclosures of how vote controllers were spending the public purse based on the Auditor General’s reports covering 2018 to 2022, from the jailing of opposition leaders and heads of media organisations for speaking out or reporting against the president’s plans and actions, to the president’s many travels that didn’t benefit the hard pressed citizenry, the main opposition leaders and executives failed to seize the moment to speak out on behalf of the people because of the fear that had been instilled in them by the strategies of the Bio led regime that was aimed at silencing them.
“The president replaced so many people in the NEC for his plans to succeed but no one in the APC, not even the flagbearer, not the party chairman, no one in the party was able to speak up for fear of what might happen to them. They only spoke through forgettable and once off party press releases without a face or faces to back them up. This is the reason why although the people had voted against Bio in 2023, he was able to hijack the process by having Konneh declare him president even before the vote count was completed. Although everyone is against how Bio won the presidency he is still in power making gains for the SLPP at the detriment of the people and state. Even president Bio knows that he hijacked last year’s presidential election, but he behaved like a leader that didn’t want his party to sink so he captured the elections,” concluded the APC stalwart.
Speaking to members of his party, the president’s supporters in the ruling party government say they are proud of him for restoring the party’s fortunes and are confident that he will repeat the party’s successes in the presidential elections vote slated for 2028. They say for all his faults and the issues relating to his wife’s meddling in the affairs of the party and state, president Bio has restored hope and confidence in the SLPP, adding that they have learned the art of politics from him.
“President Bio is the consummate politician, leader and strategist. He is serious about power, especially the power behind political power in Sierra Leone. He learned this from his experiences in 1992 when they overthrew President Joseph Saidu Momoh and in 1996 when he handed power over to Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. And this is why he has been saying that he will not hand power over to the APC. Power nor to poyo, nor to cake way you dey cut for everybody.
Bio knows that in Sierra Leone, as soon as you hand power over to your opponent, the sooner you start having problems. By his manoeuvres with the commissions of inquiry president Bio was able to shut the APC up with no one being able to challenge him or speak against his excesses. He literally put the main opposition in prison even though they were not behind bars. Because of the COIs no one in the opposition was able to travel out of the country; he did this to prevent them from seeking outside support against him while he used that opportunity to travel widely to seek help and support from the very people the opposition would have travelled to speak out against him. Since 2018 president Bio has proven to be a better leader and political strategist that anyone in the APC because he was able to outmanoeuvre the APC no matter what he did. We are very hopeful that he will repeat his successes for the party to go a third term after him,” said a ranking SLPP executive at the party’s Wallace Johnson Street headquarters.
At the end of the day, a lot of things will be said about president Bio and how his leadership plans and actions impacted on the people and state. Those on the opposition will especially focus on the negatives, but for those in the SLPP that have benefitted and hope to continue to benefit from his rise to prominence, president Bio is the consummate party leader and politician, for whom they are grateful. Lonta!