By Joseph A. Kamanda
News making the rounds of Government of Sierra Leone gallivanting around United States of America with ‘peace-expo’ in New York has been received back home and elsewhere around the world by Sierra Leoneans with mixed feelings.
Critics, including well-meaning Sierra Leoneans, the world over, have largely criticised and questioned the lavish move with thought provoking concerns as to where a true peace concert for Sierra Leone should be hosted…either in Freetown; Sierra Leone or New York, in the United States?
To many level-minded Sierra Leoneans, the appropriate venue for such an event should be anywhere in Sierra Leone and not in New York/United States if we are to actually consolidate gains back home.
However, New York being the venue for the Government of Sierra Leone funded ‘peace expo/festival,’ apparently against the wishes of many, sounds somewhat ridiculous and disingenuous to the actual purpose of restoring peace, healing and promoting reconciliation in the country.
The current security challenges and instability in the country fuelled by the mismanagement of last June 24 presidential elections, coupled with the looming threats to peace and democracy that necessitated the New York peace festival is nothing short of bogus display of President Julius Maada Bio’s reckless governance style at the detriment of the masses.
If for any case there is anything to address about conflict in the country then it should be done in Sierra Leone and not in New York. It is in Sierra Leone the problems have re-emerged and continue to raise their ugly heads and not in the US. So president Bio should fix it here in Freetown and other places countrywide not in the US.
So, Mr President should leave the flamboyant New York peace expo/festival with the double -standards Americans on their lip service pappy shows!
For us back home in Sierra Leone, all we want is social justice, equity and a trajectory of transformative national development countrywide.
For the purpose of the debate around the Government of Sierra Leone hosting a peace festival/expo in US, the problems of democratic inequities, electoral injustices were and are being perpetuated in here in Sierra Leone and not done in New York. Barefaced disregards for procedural law and constitutionality are not perpetuated in New York, but in Sierra Leone under the watch of President Bio. Tenacious intimidation of opposition politicians and minority other voices including the media are also being done in Sierra Leone and not in the United States. It was in Freetown the supreme foundation of democracy; the House of Parliament was stormed by armed police, beat lawmakers mercilessly and dragged out good number of the opposition APC MPs with impunity. These illegalities that have undermined the democratic processes in the country are not happening in the US, but in Freetown and other place in the country. Hike in the costs of food and other essential commodities are all trending on in Sierra Leone not in the US, where the Government of Sierra Leone is busy staging a peace festival as part of ways of addressing the escalating national problems. These challenges are not in any faced by US citizens but Sierra Leoneans from all sects of the society. With that being the situation the so-called peace expo/ festival should have been hosted in Sierra Leone. Not necessarily in New York at the expenses of the state with an unjustifiable nomenclature of restoring peace to the country.
Staging a peace show in New York bears no nexus with the existing political governance situation in the country. It only keeps raising multiple striking questions and concerns about the very nature of peace in Sierra Leone and the kind of global impression the Bio-led government is trying to give to the world, development partners including the US Federal Government and the United Nations as a whole about Sierra Leone, whiles in fact there is no war in the country. What impressions are we as a country and government trying to communicate to the US, UN and our development partners about the land that we love…? That we are still fighting in the tiny West African nation? No! That is not the situation at all in Sierra Leone. There is peace in the country and there must always be peace in Sierra Leone if only political governance situations are fairly handled.
There is also one need for the Government of Sierra Leone to have flown out to the States the dozens of artists to perform at the said peace show/festival in New York. That is a complete political gimmicks and waste of state resources.
Considering President Bio’s recent US visit as Chairman of the Committee of Ten (C-10) at the UN, pushing for permanent seats for Africa at the Security Council, at a huge cost on the State, there were anticipations that the president Bio of the Government of Sierra Leone should have at least taken a break with a bit of respite this time around. Government could have assigned the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Corporation, Alhaji Timothy Musa Kabba, if not the Sierra Leone Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr Michael Imran Kanu. That could have at least saved the country some amount of money which could have been probably directed towards substantial development programmes in the areas of health care delivery, water and electricity supplies agriculture and self-food sufficiency and the likes rather than wasting such huge amount of funds on overseas trips in the name of peace expo or concert. Or are there problems with the state of minds of Sierra Leone’s political leaders that requires the intervention of a peace concert in the US as a remedy?
Since 2018 to date the Government of Sierra Leone under the hegemony of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) has always present the country as a war-torn nation even though the country, even though there is no war.
It could be vividly recalled that President Alhaji Dr Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of blessed memory, declared peace in the country after the eleven (11) years civil war officially over on 18 January 2002 and ushered us in peace and stability and there is no need for the Government of Sierra Leone under the Bio administration to be shouting all over the place for peace, while the nation is not at war.
That concerns about space, national unity, and instability are always emerging from government and ruling partisans’ directly interferences with democratic processes and electoral procedures and laws governing electioneering processes in the country.
These lawless acts continue to instil fears due to deliberate system failures in prudently managing state governance issues.
Moving forward state actors must therefore refrain from spreading untrue ‘facts’ about the country. Government only needs to manage subsequent electoral processes and procedures as demand by law, by way of creating a level playing field for all contenders in the country’s democratic processes and in subsequent elections then there will be no need to be spreading fake news about war and restoring peace in Sierra Leone. The wrongs need to be corrected to avoid the framing of the country as if there is no peace in Sierra Leone.
That fairness, justice and equity always form part of the seal of the democratic political and good governance, as it was inherited from the last All People’s Congress (APC) administration, there was a very much peaceful atmosphere nationwide, with a smooth transition of state power to the Bio led SLPP. The Bio regime inherited peace, national unity, and there was complete stability. If for any reason the country happens to disintegrate to ethnic, regional, and political divisiveness, then it takes a whole national leadership responsibility from the top to be blamed for such problems.
In view of unequal opportunities shared in an imbalance manner, Mr Bio should be reminded of the facts that he was never elected as president of the SLPP nor for the south-eastern regions, but for all Sierra Leoneans and friends of the country.
Divisions of the country that continue to polarize communities under his leadership can be considered as part of his trending Bio governance styles. And Sierra Leoneans do not need this at all.
It could be recalled that the former president Ernest Bai Koroma’s APC administration and his predecessor, the late former President Alhaji Dr Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, left Sierra Leone peaceful as part of their enduring legacies, which were expected to have been fully consolidated by their successor, Julius Maada Bio as president of Sierra Leone.
In the absent of justice and equity why do we deceitfully host a peace festival in New York? So give us justice, equity and not a New York show.
