With the way things are playing out in the public space, unless by an act of God, there is every indication that the incumbent President and Government planning on a repeat; a third time repeat of the party and President’s 2018 and 2023 elections campaign strategies and consequent victories.
If the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) was hoping to retake or wrestle State House and governance from the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), the party should know that it has its work cut out as there is every indication that President Julius Maada Bio has consolidated power and plans on keeping the APC and others out of running the government and in opposition for a considerable time.
The idea that president Bio is planning an early or 2028 exit from the political stage is farfetched as he has shown no indication that he either plans on leaving or backs or supports a partisan to replace him as party flagbearer, president, and leader based on the expectation that he will, as according to the constitutional provision on presidential tenures or terms, step aside after two terms.
A cursory glance at some of the events leading to this week, it is clear that president Bio has really settled in as president despite how the 2023 presidential election was tallied, declared, and won. The first move that the president made to guarantee that he gets his way was to clamp down on the opposition and throwing them in disarray. Taking a cue from the disappointments and ire that resulted from Ernest Bai Koroma (EBK) selecting Samura Kamara as his replacement for the 2018 election, president Bio and his strategists hung on to the bitter flagbearer battle in the APC to plant or sow further seeds of discord within the APC.
The first move aimed at clamping down on the APC and any other party or individual that would want to challenge Bio and the SLPP’s domination of the government of Sierra Leone was the Governance Transition Team (GTT) report that labeled people working in the Bai Koroma government as belonging to a criminal racketeering enterprise. This labeling of the 2007 to 2018 government of Sierra Leone headed by the APC was the qualification for the commissions of inquiry that looked into how people in the previous government expended the public purse. The resulting White Paper and the cases for prosecution are like swords of Damocles hanging over anyone that would dare speak up and out. This move in effect made the APC ineffective in opposition up to present. The effect of the Government White Paper on the psyche of the main opposition camp is still keeping sound APC politicians from taking the party and president to task, even after he continues to make light of everything that make us a democratic state.
Still on the consolidation trend, the president using the power of the law was able to introduce the proportional representation system of elections although we already had delineated constituencies and the nation was not at war or in civil crisis that would prevent the continued use of the constituency system for the 2023 elections. The use of the PR system not only side lined smaller political parties out of state governance in the House of Parliament, it also gave the SLPP an outright majority in Parliament, something the president was unable to achieve in 2018 after winning the hot seat.
We all remember how 10 APC MPs were unconstitutionally removed by the court instead of a bye-election as prescribed in the 1991 Constitution; how Speaker Bundu was imposed on the House and how ineffective the Fifth Parliament was in debating the Auditor General’s reports into the Bio led government. Not intending to leave any stone unturned, the president and his legal representative, the Attorney General, introduced and passed laws that restricted the democratic space such as the Cybercrime Law and midterm census.
Turning his attention to his own party, the bold President has been able since 2012 to keep any and all SLPP flagbearer hopefuls at bay, going as far as not encouraging any of them to make their intention known. President Bio has gone way beyond the constitutional provision of two attempts limit for the flagbearer and two terms for the incumbent President.
Even today, two years into his discredited and still disputed 2023 presidential election victory, President Bio has been able to keep SLPP flagbearer hopefuls quiet. Anyone that was looking forward to replacing Bio for the 2028 elections has been reminded of who the boss is and what their focus should be on: promoting the president’s second term plan, not their own selfish or personal ambitions, by no less a person than the First Lady.
Madam Bio was vocal about SLPP flagbearer aspirants not limited to the Chief Minister gallivanting and positioning themselves to take over from her husband while his second term agenda is still in effect, which agenda translates to a three (3)-peat, a third time repeat of the magic of 2018 and 2023. The Maada Bios do not want to promote the idea of a sinking or listing SLPP government ship, as all hands are expected to be on deck until we know the president’s plans for the Office of the President going forward.
For all intents and purposes there is no one in the SLPP that is not entirely happy with the party being in state power for the second time since we became a Republic in 1971. The party’s fortunes have been restored and many partisans made liquid enough to support the party even if they were to be slippery enough to allow governance to slide out of their grip.
Legally partisans have made fortunes from their spending of the public purse in unintended and very creative even criminal means; illegally the regime was recently let out the closet as a drug dealing criminal enterprise after USD 100, 000 and suitcases loaded with cocaine were discovered in a Sierra Leone embassy vehicle in Conakry after returning from Freetown. Today the main area to buy the dreaded narcotic Kush is only a stone’s throw away from the SLPP party office back of the Main Bus Station on Wallace Johnson Street. Party gangsters who were long denied jobs in the government because government work is more of brains than pawns are the kingpins in the new drug craze with many of them part of the nouveau riche.
Members of the SLPP have been and are encouraged and emboldened by the fact that they are still in power; although the second term win can only be described as stealing or hijacking of the people’s mandate. The members of the SLPP, whether Paopa or not, want for the president to make the double a treble, the repeat a three-peat, not clearly saying nor knowing what the president’s plans for State House are going forward. Their hope is that either with Bio or another partisan, they want a third term for the SLPP.
The trillion Leones question is what or who can stop Julius Maada Bio and the SLPP from a third term in office?
It certainly will not be the main opposition APC, which is yet to show soberness as an effective opposition and a party in waiting to form a government as they have been quieted and shit-scared of spending time in jail or losing their landed or other properties based on a resurrection of the White Paper threat.
The APC alone will not be able to effectively mount a campaign against president Bio and the SLPP if they fail to get their house in order and the people of Sierra Leone from all walks of life on board. The APC must stir the people into frenzy, by demanding a government of delivery over one that promises much but delivers little or next to nothing. The party should remind the people of Maada Bio’s and the SLPP’s excesses and how they have affected our peace, economy, livelihoods, image/reputation, and national cohesion.
If Bio leaves power and a three-peat move is quelled, then the people of Sierra Leone will have to decide through the ballot box, except this time around any and every attempt to rig the election is exposed or challenged, with the APC keeping how the 2023 election panned out in the people’s minds. Lonta!