The present stage and state of our politics when juxtaposed to our level of development outside of Freetown, especially across the provinces where most of our leaders come from, has led many citizens and politicians to call for our leaders to put or think about the nation first before all else.
Since 2018, the nation has not been governed in a normal way. Because the country is run based on the prerogative of the chief executive as opposed to the rules and procedures of law as prescribed in the nation’s supreme law document, the 1991 Constitution, the nation has been ushered from one stage of insecurity to another, with the people in the dark as to what they should be expecting next.
The ruling party government of Sierra Leone has a knack for doing things in the interest of their party, tribe and region, much to the chagrin of the highly expectant people, who always get disappointed despite the promises made by the party and its leading personality in the person of the flagbearer.
However, despite openly doing things in the interest of their supporters in the southeast, we can see that the level of development in the regions does not match the kinds of promises made to take development to the provinces.
While the people see the moves by the regimes to focus on a particular tribe or region as merely a ploy to stoke tribal sentiments, the people of Sierra Leone has never had national issues or problems relating to tribalism as it was achieved in Rwanda.
Although politicians have tried and continued to try even after 2018, they have failed to use our tribes to foment national insecurity. They have failed to polarise the nation along tribal lines because we have as a people been intermarrying since before the white man came to Africa.
While playing the tribal card has not worked, our unscrupulous leaders have gone as far as using the politics of the day to try to achieve getting under the skin of the people to usher into the nation tribal discord that could render the state ungovernable.
Since 2018 we have seen a president that has done all in his plans and actions to continue dividing the nation since he believes in the concept of divide and rule, going as far as doing this to get his way out.
But the citizens of Sierra Leone here at home and abroad are reminded that the onus on uniting the country and maintaining our peace and progress depends on we the people uniting in our own interest, not in the interest of a party, tribe or personality. Sierra Leonean citizens must be conscious and aware that there is no place like home and that there is no other Sierra Leone.
The citizens as a matter of urgency must forget party politics and focus on a politics of delivery, failing which they should unite and unseat or vote out any party government and president that are against the development of the state. We must unite against bad leadership defined by continued hardship and suffering, runaway hikes in the prices of goods and services, social insecurity, tribal, regional and political divisions, and the need for the incumbent to steal the people’s mandate knowing that they would vote him out in a free, fair and credible election or voting process.
FORUM was informed that although the people want to come together, they are being forced apart by the politics of the day that would want for them to focus on their narrow tribal prejudices instead of having all hands on deck to get the national project of sustainable development and peace off the ground.
PAOPA as we know this SLPP political ideology is strictly south-eastern, which the people consider as a travesty of the hopes they had placed in the executive to bring the nation together politically. This sort of thing should not be allowed to take root as each party has members from other regions and tribes. Sierra Leone is not only made up of the southeast, there are people living in the other cardinal points.
The northwest we know has more of the country’s mineral wealth, so what if north-westerners say they will not share the mineral proceeds with others from outside their region, this would not be considered as fair or uniting the nation. But this is what political parties do when they fail to inspire the people and so develop the nation; they fail to look at the converse to one-sided development.
Before the present head of party government, it must be noted that since the passing of Albert Margai, the SLPP has not had a successful flagbearer from the southeast. That only happened with the advent of the current head of the SLPP government, which development people say has ended up destroying the country because of the leader’s love for divide and rule politics.
For Albert Margai, his problem was stoking all kinds of divisions while at the same time passing bad and oppressive laws. From Margai in the 70s, the SLPP next chose Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in 1996. Kabbah took over during the time of the bloody 11 year civil war, which he ably ended. Kabbah united the country as per his mandate and set up a government of national unity involving people from all across the nation, not just those from his region in the northwest.
When our current leader took over the SLPP, the south-easterner introduced the PAOPA ideology, a very violent and forceful philosophy, despite having seen the national development achieved by the Ernest Bai Koroma regime. Koroma improved the whole country except Kenema where people refused his development overture saying they would wait for an SLPP president to bring development to them. Sadly, five years after promising them, this president has not made good on his promise to develop Kenema. There is a widespread belief that the people of Kenema overwhelmingly voted against the president on 24 June, 2023.
After his election “victory” of 2018, the ruling party head of government has left the country more corrupt, underdeveloped, violent, dishonest and tribally polarised than ever.
However, despite dividing the country to rule, at the end of the day we are all going through the same experiences of the day bordering on runaway price hikes and national insecurity that resulted from the announcement of the president as winner of the 24 June poll.
We are all paying for our leader’s short-sightedness in trying to do a politics of the southeast. If he was focused on uniting the country he wouldn’t have allowed the bag of rice to rise from Le200,000 per bag to now close to Le1 million. He met petrol at Le6, 500 per litre now it is Le30, 000. The $100 was at Le750, 000, now it is at Le2.4 million.
We can see all these prices reset if we focus on a government of national (that is tribal and regional) unity instead of tribal or party based politics.
