Everywhere across the country, from Freetown to Yele, Kambia to Zimmi, you hear one expression: ‘Tin trong o!’ (Translated: Things are hard/difficult)
As hardships get harder every day, with prices of some goods and services going up regularly, people in the main are confused as to why we find ourselves in such a difficult position, but more so when would things change, hopefully for the better.
Frankly, people didn’t expect us to be in the situation we find ourselves owing to the 2018 SLPP Manifesto that seemingly promised to take us much higher from the governance benchmarks set by former President Ernest Bai Koroma.
So there was the expectation that President Bio, based on his idealistic party Manifesto, was going to continue right from where President Koroma had let off.
You see, EBK like President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah had broken the chain of governance style passed down from Sir Milton Margai and President Siaka Stevens and had changed that top-heavy ethnic based governance trajectory where absolute power is consolidated in one person.
Our people had gotten tired of such leadership style and wanted to do things the way they see happening in progressive societies. Government under the Margais and Pa Sheki was based on the “winner takes all” mentality, where government ministries, departments and agencies were dominated by one ethnic group, with others sidelined and made to seek patronage from those in power. It was a government of waste, patronage and violence.
The way it worked was once elections results were announced, citizens from other tribes working in MDAs, irrespective of their position, qualification, training and relevance to that MDA, were summarily replaced with members of the election winner’s tribe. Such people would be left to look for alternative work until their party returned to power.
This became the foundation for the wholesale theft of government coffers, properties and equipment that happens in MDAs when one party leaves power. The corruption that became a by-line for government workers emanated from such a mentality. It was this ethnic-regional-party based corruption that led to the system of patronage and wastage and all the other issues that resulted to the fratricidal civil war that devastated the country.
The people of Sierra Leone had gotten tired of this style of governance, which can also be blamed for the brain drain Sierra Leone suffered during those bad old days. But Presidents Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Bai Koroma studied this history and changed things. Kabbah, whose tenure was focused on maintaining our fragile post-war peace, ensured ethnic balance and laid foundation for some of the projects carried forward by EBK, whose regime is being called the most successful regime in the history of governance in Sierra Leone.
EBK’s tenure was so successful, non APC members still boast that ‘though we were not in power, Ernest made money flow into all our pockets by his style of governance’. Many still remember EBK allowing SLPP MDA workers to keep their positions for months after he assumed power. During both regimes, Kabbah’s and Bai Koroma’s, everyone found or had something to do; no one complained of hardships.
The people of Sierra Leone had started trusting their leaders again. Before EBK and Kabbah, people had little or no trust and respect for public servants, especially ministers, presidents and heads of departments and agencies.
But fast forward to the present ‘New Direction’, the people of Sierra Leone that this medium spoke to in the main see President Bio as ‘returning Sierra Leone in a new direction to the style of governance that was causing our deaths’.
Today, after four years on the helm, President Bio has taken the country back to the days of Sir Milton Margai and Siaka Stevens by not only making the SLPP, his cabinet and government MDAs ethnically toxic, but he even went ahead and created more MDAs and packed them with his south-east regional kinfolk. Sadly, the nation did not and still do not have the money to pay all these new government employees, for which more public debt was needed, to the tune of $3 billion.
The people say ‘Bio must be stopped’. Adding: ‘If President Bio is allowed to continue, the country will not only be heavily indebted, but that hated system of patronage “bra you borbor dey o” created by Pa Sheki will be entrenched, and we will be ethnically polarised again.’
‘Like Donald Trump, Bio is bad for Sierra Leone. Trump’s era was characterised by the resurrection of racists from every hole they were hiding in America. But the people of America thought they had long passed that point, even going as far as electing a Black man, Barack Obama as president. Trump was voted out because he wanted to take America back to the days of overt racism in the public space. Now we have a similar thing here. Bio has reversed the serious gains we as a country had made with Pa Kabbah and EBK. We should not allow him to continue; he must be stopped,’ said Pa Ali Sesay, who said he voted for Bio in 2018, ‘but will not vote for him if I live to see 2023 elections’.