There is magnanimity in losing. Yes, someone can lose a fight, election or match and end up making a bigger statement than the victor’s winning.
Former President of Liberia, George Manneh Weah has proven that one can be seen as even larger than life for the simple act of losing. Should Sierra Leone expect the same move to allowS for the free will and choice of the people to prevail?
Here at home people have a hard time believing that Bio will allow for the people’s true votes to make a difference who heads the Office of the President.
Before Bio, the man he and his former boss, Captain Valentine Strasser overthrew, Joseph Saidu Momoh (who returned the nation to multiparty democracy), had every opportunity and right to return and be reinstated as Head of State.
But knowing that he was not needed by the people, knowing that his return would cause another military intervention and make a further mess of the nation’s economy and scant peace divided the nation had managed to retain Momoh decided against continuing as President of Sierra Leone.
On the contrary, after his overthrow by Corporal Gborie and Johnny Paul Koroma, late President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah requested military intervention to get him reinstated saying that after the intervention even if there are only chickens left residing in Sierra Leone he would return to rule.
President Bio has had two great examples set for him in doing things either in the interest of the nation or the people, with the latest coming from neighbouring Liberia where the incumbent made a declaration that he would jail anyone caught cheating or manipulating the elections to give him an edge, a declaration many have recognised as the main reason losing the election.
But do we expect President Maada Bio to be as selfless as to have a true and honest election where all registered voters are allowed to vote without threat or intimidation, and that their votes will be tallied freely, fairly and credibly.
Based on his track record of dishonesty as president of Sierra Leone, there is a huge cloud of doubt on the side of the populace that Bio will finally step into and display the character indicative of his role as the nation’s fountain of honour.
Julius Maada Bio is wildly regarded as dishonest with many examples demonstrating the obvious. Honesty is one of the foundations of a relationship; it develops into or builds trust for you in the other person.
In his view on the electoral impasse, Maada Bio described it as a war situation for which, he said, the first casualty in any war was the truth.
Based on this revelation by our leader over Aljazeera TV news station, the truth is dead and all that have been coming out of the president and his party government relating to the electoral impasse, no matter how lofty or ideal is a flat lie.
In the absence of truth, the only other option is lie, and more lies to cover or prop them up.
According to some of his supporters, unlike George Weah in Liberia and late Joseph Saidu Momoh, in Maada Bio’s machinations to maintain his grip on power, he spent an inordinate amount of time and public funds focused on how to stay in power than on how to fix the economy and solve our socio-political issues.
The road to Bio’s second term “victory” is a masterpiece of political symphony that boils down to downright thievery.
It was niftily orchestrated and stage managed with such precision that left to our own devices based on how such elections have ended in Sierra Leone, Bio would have well been on his way to another term without stress.
But, thanks to the insistence of the APC under Dr Samura Kamara and our friends in the US, EU and UK, at the end of the dialogue communiqué phase the nation is expected to have a runoff between Bio and Samura.
But will Bio do the needful, as George Weah has done in Liberia, or seek for higher glory and sacrifice for the greater good of the nation’s peace and economy as the man he and his friends had overthrown, Joseph Saidu Momoh, Sierra Leone’s Father of Democracy?
Looking back at Bio’s history of dishonesty, we are keeping our fingers crossed for when we get to that point.
He has been responsible for most of the unrest in the country with his armed state security officers shooting people out to protest their hardships or against some government action that will negatively impact on their lives and well-being.
Bio double crossed Momoh when he and his friends left the theatre of war to come back to Freetown with a plan to overthrow him. He did the same to the leader of that coup, Captain Valentine Strasser when he also deposed him.
The nation has suffered and continues to suffer for most of Bio’s plans and actions that are clearly in his interest, and not for the people and or nation.
He promised an end to corruption, financial leakages, indiscipline, lawlessness, and lack of peace and national cohesion, but all that the nation got was the wrong end of the stick and a raw deal on all points of promise.
His promises failed to live up to expectations because they were not made in honesty just for face value or lip service.
To the ruling SLPP, both Bio and his wife have been a very divisive force. They have turned the party upside down with many people failing to make sense of up or down, right or wrong.
No one is expected to have a conscience but to blindly follow wherever the leader goes even if he jumps into a fire. The party of intellectuals has become automatons in the hands of the Bios, who use the husband’s power of appointment and termination to keep them all in check.
The international community suffered greatly at the hands of Maada Bio. After his lofty promises in the 2018 manifesto, hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, grants and loans were made to Sierra Leone to resolve our economic issues the majority of which ended up being used far from their intended purposes.
Now that the nation is at this point of the impasse that is looking like it will end the way of Liberia in terms of a runoff, will Bio go the way of George Weah and Joseph Saidu Momoh, or will he go the way of his party’s predecessor in power, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah?
Is Bio willing to lead even if there are only chickens left in Sierra Leone?
For someone that claims to love the people and country, Bio acceding to a runoff or rerun of the entire discredited elections will demonstrate his love the loudest.
By accepting, he will be allowing for the people’s voices to be heard, not just those that were allowed to vote.
But by insisting on his win, Bio is muzzling the people’s true voice and not allowing for their votes to count as the only way to enter State House by the front door.
His fight to stay in power is likened to Donald Trump’s insistence that he won the US presidential results which have made him the laughing stock in the history of the American presidency. Bio can save the nation and himself the embarrassment.
This way, Bio can finally start being honest to himself that the people truly wanted him as president. If he is that certain, then why not allow for the people’s true vote to prove that?
The dialogue communiqué is an excellent opportunity for Bio to start redeeming himself and his image or legacy. Should Bio accept for either a runoff or rerun, win or lose it would be the people’s choice. Anything else would be him appropriating the people’s freedom of choice, party and or candidate.
But at the end of the resolution of the dialogue communiqué, will we see Maada Bio rising to the occasion and doing either as Weah or Momoh, or will he insist, even if Sierra Leone becomes a wasteland?
The people of Sierra Leone and our international partners should not let up, not even an inch in their stance to see electoral fraud wiped out of our elections narrative. Lonta!