To the suffering and struggling people of Sierra Leone, their current economic situation is not going to improve any time soon. The hardship that is being experienced presently is expected to get worse. The reason is because the SLPP government is not able to fix the economy.
Since 2018 the Julius Maada Bio led government of Sierra Leone has only succeeded in accomplishing one task: making things much difficult for us than they have ever been. Compounding this is the admissions by the nation’s former minister of finance and chief minister, Jacob Jusu Saffa, and the president that they cannot fix the economy, even if we have ten finance ministers.
Since president Bio ‘won’ his second term, the nation has experienced rises to the prices of goods and services that are worse than what they had become during his first term. The price of fuel that determines the prices of so many other goods and services has gone up twice, with more rises expected as the volatile international fuel market goes through its present slump.
It should be the ambition of every government, let alone president, to fix a nation’s economy. This implies job creation, price stabilisation, boosting reserves of strategic stocks, increasing revenue mobilisation and maintaining peace through respect for and application of the rule of law. Accomplishing these and more a nation is able to maintain peace and national cohesion.
But if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that the way things are going at present has put all of us in the opposition, no matter where you are from. They are expected to get worst. If the nation’s economic woes are like this less than three months into president Bio’s second term, we don’t want to project what they would be like six months, even a year from now. We cannot and should not allow for the current situation to go past a year.
Five more years of this will surely ruin the state.
It must be recalled that before the 2018 elections, Jacob Jusu Saffa, then of the opposition SLPP, promised that they will fix the economy six months after they take over. Unfortunately, before the 2023 elections he said it would only take three months after Bio is sworn in for them to fix the economy. That was not the case between 2018 and 2023, it surely is not so at present.
If the situation across the country forced citizens who couldn’t take it quietly sitting down to want to come on to the streets in protest despite the chance of being shot on sight based on orders from above, what will happen if we continue like this? We should expect more price hikes, more hardship and suffering, more protest actions, more police killing such civilians out to demonstrate, and a nation that will certainly not be at peace with itself.
It had long been settled that the New Direction regime came into governance to enrich themselves. President Bio and many of the people that had assisted him during his time away from Sierra Leone had not worked for years before their surprise 2018 win. After we reckoned they had paid themselves during the first term, what is it that they want to accomplish this second term if not to wreck the nation?
With the president and his electoral commissioner failing to do as expected with regards our electoral problem, more sanctions, funding cuts and freezes, and bans are expected, which will exacerbate our already threadbare existence.
But sadly all these actions are not going to affect the people they are expected to. Only the people that the western nations and organisations claim they are fighting for will suffer. Right now with the price of fuel being Le30, everyone from the APC to SLPP and other party heartlands are paying the same price. So whether you voted for president Bio or Dr Samura Kamara, we are all suffering for what has happened since the 24 June presidential election results were announced.
Our current economic situation will never be sorted out if we don’t sort out this electoral impasse. If fixing corruption was the solution to fixing the economy during Bio’s first term, then sorting out this elections dispute is the only solution to fixing the economy at present. But the million dollar question remains, will our elected officials do the needful on behalf of the people, or will they continue insisting that they won the elections for which sanctions are killing us?
On 24 June 2023 the people of Sierra Leone, despite all the promises that were made to them and all the money and gifts splashed around by elections hopefuls, overwhelmingly voted for change. According to those that tallied the results at polling stations across the country in the main have said Dr Samura Kamara won the elections, which winning was not enough to offset a second round runoff.
But by insisting that he won the elections, president Bio and his electoral commissioner and all suspected of rigging the election are under sanction from the international community. Their sanctions have worsened our economic situation, which is the worst since Independence from Great Britain.
Therefore, if fixing what has amounted to a stolen elections mandate is the solution of our present economic woes, then if we as a nation fail to keep insisting and demanding every day that president Bio didn’t win the 24 June elections and call for his removal, then we should only expect the worst.
Not long ago this medium predicted that the 24 June elections will be the incumbent Julius Maada Bio versus the people of Sierra Leone who are responsible for giving him his mandate. It will take the people of Sierra Leone to reverse this trend, or else…we will only have ourselves to blame!