By: Winstanley. R. Bankole Johnson
In the immediate aftermaths of the (“negotiated”) 2018 SLPP political victory and upon realizing the breakneck speed at which their reckless exuberance would lead them to self-destruction if left unchecked, I volunteered a couple of advices through various articles on restraints and political tolerance as far back as 2019, and four of which were captioned as under:
– “Tone Down The Rhetoric – Or We Perish Together”
– “Come Now And Let Us Reason Together”
– “Who Should Blink First”
– “Turning The Other Cheek”
My summations in each of the above pieces were passionate entreaties to President Bio that with those elections past and gone, it would serve his personal, political party and national interests better if he focused instead on issues of peaceful co-existence that would foster economic growth than on his penchant for dwelling on hatemongering and vindictiveness. But all of that was to no avail.
Divisive
The SLPP were soooooo engrossed in, and consumed by a venom for vengeful retribution against the APC in general but more particularly against Ernest Bai Koroma, combined with an insatiable desire for unchecked personalized aggrandizement through bleeding the country’s economy bone dry, that they soon began scheming up and selling divisive ideas they very well knew would bolster anti-APC passions among their own gullible South-Eastern peoples. But this is a common ruse among dictators; to whip up ethnocentric rhetoric as would stir up emotions of vulnerability and imaginary defenses among their tribesmen, even where no such threats existed. For such emotions to be sustained they had to be laced with promises and assurances of regional economic independence and stability. So between 2018 and 2019 it wasn’t uncommon to hear from diehard SLPP sympathizers that they were going to:
– Divide this country into two, with one head of state each for the North-West and another for the South-East.
– Relocate all Sea Freight activities from Deep Water Quay to Bonthe, from where all imports and exports in/out of Sierra Leone shall be transited. (After all Freetown is not Sierra Leone)
– Obliterate the APC from the face of this country for ever, after which we will chase and kill the entire leadership and party rank and file of the APC including all those who have served in any Ministerial, MP, Boards and Para-Statal Agency Directors or Heads including their children yet unborn.
Abundant video and other social media evidences of such hair-raising proposals exists, and a few of which will hopefully be included in the agenda for the proposed meeting between President Bio and the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Khan (KC).
But how on earth each or all of those preposterous reforms could have been achieved in a multi-party democratic environment without the requisite revisions of the legal frameworks is what the SLPP didn’t fathom. Nevertheless through it all, not for once did anyone within the SLPP leadership or party rank and file urged restraint amongst their errant memberships. Yet conversely they would occasionally bellow that the APC should restrain popular social media freelance commentator going by the acronym of “Adebayoh”, who is not even a member of the APC party.
Pottage
It was that same insatiable desire for revenge against the APC that soon became an SLPP trademark, and which ultimately is again emerging as their nemesis. How and why a leader and Head of State under “Oath to do good to all manner of persons without discrimination…” could have allowed himself to have become so blinded by hatred is what is irking the international community to the extent that the radar of the ICC has now inescapably zoomed in on his location.
The disdainful part of the SLPP hate wagon is that the most enlivened by such divisive anti-APC rants are their elites – Professionals and Technocrats cutting across all tribes for that matter – and who though they ought to know much better, cared less about selling their souls for “a mess of pottage”, simply because of personal disagreements with Ernest Bai Koroma.
They are the same bunch of selfish ingrates that have goaded President Bio to walk the plank of defiance to his political detriment. Look at the lurch we’re in now!!
Now as it is, the SLPP leadership Boa Constrictor (or Tormentor) would appear to have swallowed a whole Porcupine with all its quills that it can neither ingest, nor spit out. By the end of his encounter with the ICC, President Bio would have set an unenviable record for mention in the “2023/24 Guinness Book of Records” as the very first living epitome of the “stubborn fly that followed, and was buried with a corpse into a grave”. The only difference this time though is that his will be the corpse of the SLPP.
But as Sierra Leoneans this should be a matter of concern to all of us because Mr. Bio is not only our Head of State but this is the very first time an incumbent Head of State is being invited to the ICC for sublime discussions.
Ignore the SLPP distraction that the invite is to commend him for our attaining membership on the UN Security Council (after fifty-two years) and for the democratic gains made over the last five years by his administration. If that were the case why were the heads of the other four new non-permanent UN Security Member nations not also invited by the ICC?
Charlatans
As at now the deed, like the irreparable damage to Bio/SLPP reputation is done, and there can be no escape route out of conviction for many of prominence and eminence. Those who see this ICC invite of Bio as their last opportunity at fleecing slush moneys out of the first family or believe that by copious references and spurious quotes from the Geneva Convention and other international statutes they can assuage or allay the fears of Bio they because have always had a monopoly over academic and commonsense brilliance (that they have been using to manipulate malleable minds) are best advised to have a rethink. If Russia’s President Putin – with a Veto Power within the very UN Security Council – who already has an indictment over his head could not tire out America and the ICC neither would Bio, whose next groceries list must be approved by the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. The choice for President Bio to either be guided by sound legal representation when approaching the ICC or to continue with SLPP political charlatans is his anyway.
Yes, the US Travel Ban list is for now as opaque as the list of potentials to be indicted by the ICC. But the US Travel Ban scope is very wide to wit: “…all those believed to responsible for, complicit in undermining democracy in Sierra Leone including manipulation or rigging of the electoral processes, intimidation of voters, elections observers or civil society organizations through threats or acts of physical violence; or abuse or violations of related human rights abuses in Sierra Leone….”.
Scope
So from that we can see the scope of this ban will be affecting most of those involved in our electoral processes starting from the botched Mid-Term Census by Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL), through manipulations of unconstitutional Presidential Directives leading unto the implementation of the Proportional Representation (PR) perforce (Parliament). It will also be affecting those at the Political Parties Regulations Commission (PPRC) and Electoral Commission Sierra Leone (ECSL) that supervised the fraudulent Voters Registration exercises, political campaign restrictions on the main opposition APC Party including three assassination attempts at the life of and their candidate Dr. Samura Kamara; and right up to inconsistencies and irregularities related to votes counting, tabulation, transmission, collation and final announcements that led the Chief Electoral Commissioner (CEC) Mohammed Konneh to have bestowed a stolen elections mandate that misdirected a Principal (the Hon Chief Justice) to have sworn Mr. Bio into a second term of office as President.
In between and amongst all of them we will have to find spacious places to insert the heads of the various Security Sector (ONS, Military and Police) – especially the Police – who even with all their Cyber Technology sophistication that IG Fayia Sellu boasted could identify miscreants anywhere throughout the country with ease, he did not bring anyone to book – even with glaring evidences of atrocities being committed against the opposition throughout the South-East before, during and after the June 24th Elections.
Nexuses
I cannot at this stage fathom how wide the ICC net will be cast, but am however appreciative of the clearly inferred nexuses between the American Travel Ban notice and the ICC invite and their implied consequences. I am not ruling it out that Sierra Leone’s membership to the UN Security Council was all a part of the international conspiracy to rope the country’s leadership into full eventual compliance with all demands of the ICC, encapsulating the global desire of the UN to protect democratic governance. So it is the outcomes of both going forward that will confirm or deny whether the ICC invite was indeed to congratulate Bio both for taking Sierra Leone to the non-permanent membership status in the UN Security Council and the democratic gains he has made over the past five years. Only time will tell.
Integrity
Meantime I am heartened that the APC has consented to the arrival of International Peace Brokers to help clear us out of our present political impasse. There has to be a way out of this quagmire – without the APC buckling in our demands. So throughout their meetings with the Peace Brokers and based on past experiences, the intransigence of the SLPP should never be underestimated. And that is not to infer belligerence, but rather to ensure that the correct thing is done.
There is absolutely no way the rest of the universe incorporating the EU, UK, USA, France, Germany, Carter Center, The AU, ECOWAS and the National Elections Watch (NEW) could all be wrong at the same time against the SLPP. And if the Peace Brokers make the mistake of allowing the status quo to continue, then like I said before we might as well re-consider the need to dispense with International Observers in future electioneering processes.
I would also urge the APC Party to ensure that in the same way that the SLPP insisted on zero-recruitment of local resources when they wanted to run their vindictive Commissions of Inquiries (COIs), so too should the APC also now insist that throughout those deliberations with the International Peace Brokers, neither “Observer” nor “Participatory” status should be accorded to any local/indigenous civil society groups – worse still the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL) and the Human Rights Commission Sierra Leone (HRCSL) as all of them have sinned and fallen short of integrity.
With news of the International Peace brokers are also emerging good news from the “Grapevine” that the Security Sector has been working overtime to sanitize their surroundings. Benghazi – the notorious Police Torture Chamber has been sanitized; Police Cells and other Detention Centers are also being sanitized and fumigated to erase traces of man’s inhumanity to man. Those same “Grapevine” reports also indicate that the Pademba Road and other maximum detention facilities have also been given facelifts and recently provided with the luxury of Plasma TV Screens for detainees’ recreation. This is just in case the visitors would wish to see what sort of conditions opposition offenders are kept.
My personal consolation in the arrival of the International Peace brokers is that until their departure, the daily menacingly intimidating sights and sounds of gun-toting security personnel among peaceful citizens, and unexpected molestation of the latter will cease.