The ruling party government headed by President Julius Maada Bio is desperate. He is trying to avoid the OTP or one term presidency curse. The party’s desperation stems from the fact that supporters and party planners and strategists are finding it hard to come up with credible plans and actions to convince the voters to re-elect the embattled regime. There may or may not be a 2023 SLPP manifesto, a word voters now see as the epitome of a failed regime.
Word reaching this medium from highly placed sources within New Direction said party strategists are trying to ensure that President Julius Maada Bio and his Paopa / New Direction government avoids the one term presidency (OTP) blight. The winds of electoral change sweeping the world have made mincemeat of many incumbents, with first term presidents suffering the most. Julius Maada Bio and his SLPP are trying by all means to avoid a first term exit of the presidency including the president, his wife and vice president.
Post-war Sierra Leone has been opportune to see three presidential regimes including Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, Ernest Bai Koroma and Julius Maada Bio. After military junta head Brigadier Julius Maada Bio handed power over to Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, the late head of state ruled for two terms (1996-2007).
His tenure was survived by the Ernest Bai Koroma presidency, which was also successful twice, with Bai Koroma doing 11 years after the election cycle was affected by the Ebola virus disease epidemic that had ravaged the country and its other two Mano River Union basin sister countries of Guinea and Liberia. The now renowned architect of post-war Sierra Leone’s most successful economy and the nation’s uncompromising national developer is now a sought after and highly respected global statesman making effective representation for Africa on the world’s stage. EBK, as he is fondly called, was president from 2007-2018.
However, voters we spoke to reminded that Presidents Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Bai Koroma were re-elected after they successfully accomplished the tasks they were mandated with. They said the second term in a democracy with a two term constitutionally sanctioned dispensational limit does not mean that a ruling regime should do ten unbroken years. It means that the ruling party government must do all in their power to please the people during the first term so as to be able to convince them for a second term mandate.
Your second term mandate is guaranteed by your first term actions. Kabbah’s mandate was to restore peace to a war torn country. Bai Koroma’s was to ensure national cohesion and a sustained national development plan successive governments would have to accomplish as continuity projects going forward, before starting their own tenure or regime based projects.
But the real fear in the ruling SLPP is that if President Bio fails to win re-election he will become the first president in post-war Sierra Leone to fail to win a second term mandate. Based on how things have turned out under the SLPP government since 2018, Sierra Leoneans say President Bio is set to break this trend and become an OTP – a one term president. It must be recalled that several well known presidents were recently reduced to one term presidencies including but not limited to Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, John Mahama of Ghana, and Donald Trump of the US. The voters in these countries were not convinced by the incumbent regimes of having done the people’s work, for which they were voted out of power.
Concerned supporters and high ranking members of the ruling SLPP establishment and some of our development partners have reminded that other citizens and potential voters they have been speaking to since the advent of the Maada Bio regime have one thing in common; their universal disdain for the way the ruling party government lied to them after making such glowing campaign promises in their now infamous 2018 campaign manifesto.
The people of Sierra Leone must be educated on what democracy truly is for them to have a healthy appreciation for the two term limit set on presidencies across the world. We must know that the two term (which is after every four years in the US and after every five years in Sierra Leone) limit on the presidency is not your right as a leader, it is a limit set to give every citizen a chance at being president. Apart from many other benefits to the society, the two term limit, more than any other aspect, discourages dictatorships and the president for life syndrome.
Once you have ruled twice (whether back-to-back or after a break), you are no longer needed and will not be needed as a president in the future. The nation is made up of more people like you than you may think or know or want to believe. You are not the only one God blessed with the wisdom to rule Sierra Leone. This is a nation of eight million others capable of leading the country.
It then follows that had President Julius Maada Bio and his New Direction technocrats done what they had promised in their 2018 manifesto they wouldn’t have need for campaigning to convince the people for a second term mandate. Their works and the people of Sierra Leone would have campaigned for them. But as it stands the regime has not only failed and disappointed the people of Sierra Leone, it has left deep chasms across the country, with national cohesion and peaceful coexistence under threat. The country under this SLPP regime is more polarised along tribal and regional lines than at any other time in the nation’s long and unnecessarily difficult economic and political history.
Therefore the threat of President Bio being a one term president (an OTP) is more real than feigned. The President Bio regime has failed to provide the promised and hoped for goodies for the people and country. Apart from allowing for corruption and violence to go unchecked, this regime is on the books for reminding the people of the hardship, violence and crimes of the warring years, for which the president need not be reminded of his key role as a catalyst.
Ruling party supporters have however said that since President Bio took over power in 2018 his only ambition has been to avoid being the first one term president in post-war Sierra Leone. Sadly, based on how the plans and actions of the president, his wife, vice president, cabinet and heads of government ministries, departments and agencies have backfired these past five years that have left the country worse off than ever before, President Bio should not be surprised that the people of Sierra Leone are desperate to see the back of his failed and forceful PAOPA regime. The people have said ‘no matter what the SLPP does, President Julius Maada Bio will be an OTP, a one term president’.