Sierra Leone continue to lose face among the community of nations since President Julius Maada Bio took over state governance as other nations look at our democracy as a sham (pretence, deception, facade, charade, con, fraud).
Bio’s presence at State House and his adventures attending international events as our President continue to make others feel uncomfortable as they see him as a hypocrite that preaches democracy in his speeches while at the same time is being the impediment to real progress in Sierra Leone.
If Sierra Leone is to reclaim her place among serious democracies, they expect our leaders to see the need to reverse the declaration of Maada Bio winner of 24th June, 2023 elections and re-do the whole process.
Meanwhile, you can get a feel for what people feel or think based on how their representatives think or feel as the representative is supposed to think and feel as the people would. Members of the diplomatic corps feel uneasy around Mr Bio because they know he loses the election, but still insist that he is the winner and that the country should get back to business as usual.
Foreign reps said there could not be business as usual unless the right government chosen by the people through their votes takes the reins of power.
Having to deal with Maada Bio, they said had made them feel like hypocrites as they were bounded by diplomatic protocols that limited what they could say and do in their host countries.
We feel like our hands are tied and we cannot really say what we feel or think at least not in their entirety.
On the one hand, we know that we have to do business with Sierra Leone yet on the other hand we have a regime that is the hallmark of everything we preach against intolerance and impunity despite the facts on the ground, uses violence or scare tactics to cow and subjugate the citizenry to the point where no one is allowed to speak the truth according to their conscience.
Sierra Leone is not at the point where we can be proud of her democratic credentials.
Since Maada Bio takes power, Sierra Leone has been steadily degenerating into a lawless and corrupt country where everyone is expected to speak and dance to the tune of the party leader or president. This is not what you would call a functional democracy. As a matter of fact, Sierra Leone is presently a dysfunctional democracy.
Since 2018, the men said the nation had grown intolerant, something that was not the case during the tenures of Presidents Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Bai Koroma.
Coming from the civil war, it was agreed that the country should be tolerant of opposing voices that what people think should be heard and respected. But since Mr Bio took over, the people had been forced to keep quiet.
There is real fear of Mr Bio as a president; the people are afraid of his past as a former military leader that was successful in staging two coup d’états.
Since 2018, we see the killings of citizens by state security. The only other time Sierra Leoneans were shot and killed by state security personnel was during the civil war.
It is not healthy for people to fear their President and the men and women carrying weapons meant to protect the people. It is only in a dysfunctional democracy that police or soldiers resort to the use of force instead of talking to the people to find a middle ground.
The fear factor is the tool of oppressive regimes that use fear or scare tactics to subjugate the people.
Fear works in various ways but the most prevalent in Sierra Leone is the fear of losing one’s job. Employment is very hard to come by in Sierra Leone as most job offers come from the government, the largest employer.
‘But people are hired to uphold the integrity of their offices by performing their duties according to their terms of reference.
For example, if the electoral commissioner was considerate of how he was supposed to do his job, no one, not even the President would dare dictate to him what he should or shouldn’t do.
But, because he is scared of being fired by the hands that appointed him, he did and is still doing as expected. His decision not to release the polling data is based on his fear of losing his job.
He said the outcome or result of this fear is impunity. When duty holders fail to execute their duties by the procedure or rule of law, impunity is allowed to flourish, a state of affairs that is antithetical to the rule of law. Impunity flies in the face of the law and renders the law ineffective. Those acting with impunity do so because they are confident of being protected by those in power they work for.
This impunity is the basis for lawlessness. Since we know that the regime will protect us no matter what we do or have been accused of, this gives me more reason to act. This is why police officers and the people you call “party gangsters” act as they do: they know that they will not have to be accountable to the rule of law even if they are caught in the act.
If all else fails they know that they can rely on a presidential pardon to bypass the full effect of justice. We believe that Mr Bio’s presidency encourages this kind of behaviour.
A society ruled by men who fail to obey the rule of law is only setting up the stage for widespread lawlessness which leaves citizens in a state where they are unable to speak the truth. People, for fear of reprisals, say what is expected of them even if they know the truth.
We continue to see our public space dominated by all kinds of actions from above that are against set procedure; we continue to see justice paralysed and people made to compromise on their integrity.
This is why we say Sierra Leone is a dysfunctional democracy. The present leadership of the country is the only one to blame for this state of affair.
And since the people have been cowed into silence, your only hope is for your chief executive to find God, repent and re-set the country on the development trajectories of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Bai Koroma.