Despite all the hoopla we have endured as a people and country over the past year, what will happen after the dust settled after today’s (June 19, 2024) disclosure by the Tripartite Committee?
The long awaited report and recommendations will finally be handed over to the president and hopefully we the public will get to know what they unearthed and suggested as a way forward for the future of our electioneering processes that we hope would keep us from what we have experienced over the past year.
In other words, we hope that the report and recommendations from the Tripartite Committee will leave us saying “Never again!” will we allow the announcement of any election result to cause us so much fear and apprehension, so much division and pain.
But now that the dust has settled, the biggest question post or after June 19 is: Will the president be able to steady our economy while at the same time ensure peace and national cohesion so business and all else can flourish?
June 19 has come and it will end at midnight. All the apprehensions we have nursed as a society have also come and gone. It has become just another uneventful day in terms of violence except what the Committee has been doing for the months since they started their mandate.
However, the events of the past year have consumed not only the people but more so the sitting government. It has so overshadowed all else in our body politic that even our challenges seemed pale in comparison to the fear and worry of what will happen on June 19, 2024.
And though the previous five years had been nothing but turbulent, it would seem all of the suffering and hardships were compressed and cramped into the past year. Since June 2023 we have had price hikes in food, fuel, transportation, and the exchange rate to the US dollar, we have had the events of September 11, 2023, the attempted coup which case is still in court, hike in the toll gate crossing cost that has affected the prices of goods and services and so much more.
All of these issues notwithstanding, we have also been deprived of the good times by which we assuage all our difficulties, the moments we celebrate as a people that help us forget our struggles and cares for just a moment. We have not held cultural festivals such as celebrating our Independence Day for a very long time now and the festive and other religious holidays been nothing but boring reminders of our condition as a people; the blackouts have become too frequent so much so that generators are tearing our ears out; many people in the public and private sectors have lost their jobs; we have seen an explosion in the sale and use of the recreational drug kush.
Despite all of these issues at play we have had no word from the captain of our ship on what is going on. We have had no weather or storm updates or predictions. We have had to weather these storms ourselves. Many people across the country live on the largesse of their friends and loved ones in the diaspora who remit large sums of money back to this country to take care of their struggling kinfolk.
Will the president be able to ensure economic and socio-political progress after today, June 19?
For those on the right, based on what the president and many informed people around him, not limited to his then finance minister that later became Chief Minister Jacob Jusu Saffa had said, he will not be able to fix the economy. Things have gotten so bad under the Julius Maada Bio led government that the economy has been made to suffer from expected and avoidable shocks and those that we weren’t able to predict or prevent, like Covid-19. The people on the right would say the president himself had said several times that the economy is so banged up that he and future leaders will not be able to fix it.
But instead of focusing on this pressing issue that he was elected to fix, it must be stated that the captain of our ship had been so distracted by the issues surrounding this day that he has failed to handle his business, which is to stabilise our economy so that it can withstand any shock, expected or otherwise and by so doing ensure peace and national cohesion so businesses will thrive.
Those on the left would say they are confident that if we work together as a nation there is nothing that we cannot do, no wall that we cannot scale. This however is rhetoric based on how they continue to sow the seeds of discord that have polarised the society. Since before and after Independence we have never worked together as a society to solve things. It has always been red or green with brothers and sisters seeing each other as belonging to two sides of a chasm. We have not had a captain that has whipped the people into shape under one unifying banner to face our national challenges. It has always been us versus them, as if we are foreigners or enemies in our own country.
Now that we have come and faced this supposed day of infamy and have gone past it, the people now need reassurance from our captain that our ship will indeed be steered to calmer seas. We need honest appraisal of issues of national importance, not nicely worded speeches aimed at pleasing or appealing to the ideals of our development partners while the average man that lives by the day is left wondering about his day or his children’s future.
The doubts, questions, fears and other uncertainties that have engulfed the nation this past year would have been assuaged had the people get to hear from our captain’s or the horse’s mouth, and not from people who have overnight become demagogues at the expense of the poor suffering masses. The opinions and thoughts and sentiments of such people have held sway while our captain and the members of his crew remain very quiet.
The way forward after this day of expected fireworks is for openness and disclosure, of not playing politricks with the storms that have bombarded our tiny ship on this vast and open sea, of honest appraisal of our problems, and a bipartisan approach to solving our problems.
The way forward includes all hands on deck and no talk of us versus them. At the end of the day there is only one national tribe; Sierra Leone, and one party; unity, freedom and justice. Lonta!