The time is still early for SLPP (Sierra Leone People’s Party) to preach peace, not violence in Sierra Leone. By publicly denouncing acts of violence and destruction of property, the SLPP would be preaching peace and reassuring the public that the lawlessness experienced during the war is not returning to the country. Failure to rein in the boys people are calling SLPP thugs would confirm the people’s fears that the Calaba Town and Belgium incidents are just practice run of the kind of violence the party plans to unleash to the public in the exercise of their constitutional right to vote.
For a country and people that know the taste of the bitter pill of violence, the recent back-to-back incidents of violence that led to the loss of the life of a citizen of this country in Calaba Town at the hands of his fellow SLPP supporters and the bloody and very costly riot at Belgium by hired thugs that call the SLPP headquarters on Wallace Johnson Street their base, have sent the expected tremors across the length and breadth of Freetown.
The fear the public is experiencing because of these incidents is real. Despite the arrests, we know that justice in Sierra Leone is for the rich, who hide behind such actions by poor, desperate and impressionable young men looking for direction in their lives. We also know that when such boys transported from remote and poor villages demand their compensation for the dirty work they are hired to do, they expect to get paid, failing which they have occupied the seat of the party mandated to run the country.
Suffice it to say that with the current modes of transmitting news, these reports have indeed gone around the globe. But what you won’t hear or see in the post-incident report is that what has happened is very worrisome. Instead of the expected peace and law the New Direction Government was going to bring, what we are experiencing instead is the lawlessness that the mere term ‘PAOPA’ connotes.
The level of violence and the scale of destruction of property perpetrated against fighting and nonfighting citizens and others during the 1991-2002 Civil War are still very fresh on the minds of the people. One of the many effects of that conflict, unbridled violence in the presence of police officers, has gotten worse.
And violence knows no bounds, as not all the affected businesspeople during the Belgium riot were APC supporters. A lot of SLPP partisans lost their businesses. Surely, that wasn’t the intention of those who led the assault. If their hope was to destroy the businesses of APC partisans, then they went way beyond their desired outcome.
All across Sierra Leone, acts of violence are perpetrated against people every day. We see the dead bodies on the streets in the morning; the police assault tax paying citizens who pay their salary without being reprimanded; soldiers consider it their right to assault the people they are under oath to protect. A simple argument in Sierra Leone could turn bloody in an instant because we have a culture of violence that our leaders have used to hold on to power and intimidate the people. Unfortunately, the public learn from their leaders as children learn from their parents.
With the 2023 presidential election just around the corner, the SLPP is sending a clear message that if they can be so violent and even kill one of their own and destroy people’s properties, businesses, and homes irrespective of whether they are APC or SLPP supporters, the 2023 elections are going to be bloody. With the president and his cabinet not performing as expected, people are saying the only way this regime can be re-elected will be through violence.
Having suffered through so much, the people of Sierra Leone certainly deserve peace. These acts of violence by these boys and men who hang around party offices are not helping our image as a country. Allowed to continue, the 2023 election will see less people out to vote. This scenario would mean that anyone that wins such an election will be accused of not having the mandate as a larger portion of the population would have been tactically disenfranchised by the use of violence. The international community would not stand for that. We should not stand for that.
As a democracy, Sierra Leone is a country of laws. Instead of using violence to resolve issues, the SLPP and others should instead use democratic means. The country’s image across the world is not a good one. Ask people about Sierra Leone and they would mention slavery, repatriation of slaves, the coups and countercoups before Siaka Stevens, the despotic years under him, the Civil War, the Strasser coup, Bio’s countercoup, Foday Sankoh and the coup by Johnny Paul Koroma against President Kabba, Ebola, the Mudslide, and election violence.
Surely there is more to us than such reminders of violence. The time has come for us to reclaim our lost glory by getting rid of this image and legacy of violence that have come to define us; and the best way to start is by restoring peace to the nation and reassuring the people that it would last.
The work is cut out for the SLPP to preach peace, not violence.