The people of Sierra Leone are used to hardships. Since the country gained independence from Great Britain, regime after regime have promised but failed to deliver to the people’s expectations all the glorious things they had either promised or stated in their manifestos. The current regime of President Julius Maada Bio is no exception, with the added extra of being the most corrupt and brutal post-war regime and allowing traders to have a field day setting prices for goods and services as they see fit. The continued increase in prices has resulted into a rare unification of the people outside of the Leone Stars fielding a team.
Meanwhile, the unnecessary hardships the people have been made to suffer under the harsh PAOPA administration of the state have resulted in a rare show of unity as all and sundry, regardless of party, regional or tribal affiliation have complained that ‘President Bio and his team really don’t and never cared about this country’.
As a people used to suffering and hardship in a land blessed with milk and honey, Sierra Leoneans have come to stop relying on the people they either elected or who forced themselves on the people through various modes of disenfranchisement politicians have come to be known during every election since multiparty elections were introduced after the Siaka Stevens dictatorship.
Words such as ‘make we bear’, ‘tin go change’, ‘God dey’ and the like have been used by the struggling people of Sierra Leone who time and time again are denied their constitutional guarantee of peaceful assembly or protest by a police force bent on obeying the dictates of the party in power.
But time and time again, the unity created as a result of the hardships the people have suffered under any regime has never materialised to the party or leader being replaced with someone else. Owing to politricks, tribal or regional rhetoric or outright violence, the leaders or politicians cited for creating the hardships through policies or actions that always result in whole scale theft or plundering of the state’s resources have always bounced back to continue with their agenda that is far from the people’s expectations.
But going by the two protest or strike actions by the traders and transport unions in as many months, party members from across the board have agreed that the time has come for the people of Sierra Leone to show their elected leaders that we the people are the government of Sierra Leone and that the power to chose or depose a president and party rests with the people. The people have had enough and are promising to do away with the presidency of Julius Maada Bio as he continues to fail the nation. Bio and the SLPP they say have killed all the hopes they had in him turning things around for them and have instead become a thorn in their flesh these past four years.
During Monday’s transport protest action that resulted in scores of people walking from as far as Laka along the peninsula and Wellington in the east to Freetown, the people said for the past four years all they have been experiencing from this government is one disappointment after the other. They said President Bio and his team of managers continue to demonstrate to the nation that they are truly here on their own agenda.
In economic terms they say the country is a business and that the people elect the party that will manage our business. When the manager and his team continue to run the business at a loss, the only other alternative is to replace that manager and his team with another who will get the job done.
But questions keep coming up as to how long will this unity that has been created because of the hardships continue as Sierra Leoneans are notorious for giving up too soon or are quick to forget, which characteristics politicians employ to their advantage during elections. People have also asked how serious are the people of Sierra Leone about change when time and time again such unity have not resulted in the ousting of the regimes accused of letting the people down. With just over a year away from the presidential and parliamentary elections, there is serious doubt whether the people of Sierra Leone would really vote President Bio out of power.
‘The problem with Sierra Leoneans is that we are quick to get upset and quicker to forget as soon as things start looking up in the slightest manner. The politicians know this about us and use it against us. Today, the whole country is crying against President Bio and his band of PAOPA ideologues. If we have elections today, Bio will lose 99 to 1. But knowing our people, give them a bag of rice and a few thousand leones and you can be assured of convincing them to vote for you and forget all that you had done to them. But how long can we continue like this? How long can we continue to allow the ones we elected to run our business to keep running our business at a loss but still renewing their contract when the time comes to decide on a new management team?’ asked Musa T., a well known SLPP supporter at the Belgium business annex of King Jimmy Market.
Musa is the first to tell anyone that he has had enough of President Bio and PAOPA. ‘I left Guinea when I read the 2018 Manifesto. I told myself that a party has finally arrived in Sierra Leone that is going to change everything that has been wrong with our governments since Pa Sheki. But four years down the line I am ashamed to tell you that I voted for the SLPP. Bio and his guys have really embarrassed us as a nation first and as a party. What has happened has happened to all of us in Sierra Leone. We now have to work together to get rid of this guy before he plunges our country into a civil conflict due to his poor managing of the state,’ he admonished.
But like most of the people this medium spoke to, Musa is not confident that the people of Sierra Leone will maintain this unity that has been created out of their collective hardship created by President Bio and PAOPA. ‘You can see that Bio and his guys are not even moved by what we are going through. The price of fuel has nothing to do with the Russian war in Ukraine. We get our petrol from Nigeria. Besides, what does that have to do with the hike in prices across the board, from sachet water to transport? If we were a people that are used to cooking with natural gas, maybe such an excuse would hold.
Bad planning and poor resolution of issues continue to plague this regime because they believe that they can sell us any reason for their failures and that we will be so uninformed that we will believe them. We the people of Sierra Leone are not as clueless as PAOPA would believe. The sleeping giant of Sierra Leone has finally woken up, and I feel sorry for President Bio and the SLPP going into next year’s elections. The only way they can hope to win the election is through violence or rigging, and we are ready and waiting for both. But they will not win.
What happened in Koya and Kailahun despite the violence and disenfranchisement should be a huge warning for President Bio that the people have had enough of his stewardship of the state and would rather he steps down now to save us the unnecessary waste of money to hold elections. There is nothing new that Bio and PAOPA can tell us to convince us to re-elect them. There is no Sierra Leonean at present that will consider voting for the SLPP as a viable option for the betterment of the people and nation. We have had enough of our president and PAOPA.
They should just quit while they have amassed all the wealth they came to make out of our rich nation full of poor people,’ Musa T. said with fire in his eyes. So, the whole nation is united and bleeding red. But will this rare display of national unity around a common purpose hold until after the polls or will we see a repeat of the same old pattern of complaining without the expected outcome in the ballot box? Only time will tell.