By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
It is laughably laughable because it is funnily funny. The latest ploy by the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) to shroud its unpopularity, ahead of the 2023 Parliamentary and Presidential Elections, reminds me of one of Sir Winston Churchill’s zoological metaphors. With Cabinet approving the new National Decentralization Policy; the SLPP is now playing the Churchill-ian fabled man “…who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”
As I see it, the cardinal reason why the SLPP government has approved and sent the new National Decentralization Policy to the Draftsmen (and Draftswomen for the sake of gender parity) at the Law Officers’ Department is simply because the 2022 Local Council Elections would be test runs for the 2023 Parliamentary and Presidential Elections. And the SLPP pretty well knows that what happened in 2018, when the All People’s Congress (APC) swept majority of the Local Councils countrywide, is sure to happen in 2022. So, to give its supporters some amount of false hope for 2023; the SLPP now wants to change the rules of the game at half-time by making a football match looks like a cricket match.
Strangely, the SLPP still believes that candidates running for Parliament and the Presidency should be nominated by political parties. But when it comes to candidates for Local Councils, the SLPP now holds the standpoint that, “A person seeking to be a member of a Local Council as an elected Councillor shall present himself [I smell misogynistic tendencies here] to the electorates as an Independent Candidate; councils are going to be non-partisan”. And this criterion also goes for persons aspiring for Mayors or Chairpersons whose would-be deputies are “to be elected as Running mates…”
To me, the above reads like a panicky strategy by the SLPP government to control all the Local Councils countrywide. As recent as recently, we witnessed how some prominent members of the SLPP interfered with the Market Women’s and Okada Riders’ Associations elections. So, it logically follows that such an idea that “person seeking to be a member of a Local Council as an elected Councillor shall present himself to the electorates as an Independent Candidate” is a ploy by the Bio-led government to dictate the Local Council elections in 2022 if there are no other political parties openly involved in the electoral processes!
The argument, by the SLPP, that the main reason which provoked the new National Decentralization Policy is that they want all Local Councils “to be non-partisan” is laughably laughable because it is funnily funny. There is, and will always be, nothing like an “Independent Candidate” in any sort of elections in Sierra Leone. Common sense dictates that every “Independent Candidate” has his or her political roots or leaning in a political party. Even the “Independent Candidates” in the current Sierra Leone House of Parliament are once aligned to or associated with one of the traditional political parties in the country, or even with one of the once-upon-a-time mushroomed Third Parties. And in the next Parliamentary Election, most—if not all—of those “Independent Candidates” will be going “home” from whence they morphed into their current political beings!
So, it is a waste of time and energy for such an idea to be even mooted in the first place let alone say striving for it to be implemented. Now let me elucidate why I think this idea is laughably laughable because it is funnily funny. If would-be Mayors or Chairpersons are to present themselves as “Independents” then the main problem would be overcrowding. Let’s, for the sake of “Long Bench” argument, say 100 qualified, or over-qualified, persons present themselves to be a Mayor or Chairperson of a Local Council and pay the Nomination Fee. The problem would be: how do you put 100 candidates on a single ballot paper? And if all “Deputy Chairpersons [are] to be elected as Running mates to Chairpersons/ Mayors in Local Governments” then how are they going to be selected? The funny thing would be: people would be selecting their spouses and relatives, or even their boyfriends and girlfriends, as their running mates. That’s why it will be prudent, or convenient, for political parties to do the sieving and selecting of potential Councillors and Mayors/Chairpersons than leaving the whole process as a free-for-all affair.
And how would an “Independent Candidate” be genuinely determined? By just saying, “I no longer belong to any political party?” Again let’s, for the sake of an “Ataya Base” argument, say any of the current Mayor or Chairperson writes an official letter to a political party renouncing his or her membership of that party and presents himself/herself as an Independent and pays the Nomination Fee. It is common sense that though this person might have officially left his/her party, and has a document to that effect (though s/he might still be holding on to his or her Party Card); that party and its supporters still know that that person is still one of their own. So, what will happen is that, after nominations, and when campaign periods are announced; that party will use its friendly communications outlets (both Traditional and Social Media) to inform and direct its supporters which of the “Independent Candidates” to vote for. So, in unclothed language, “Independent Candidates” would be having the backings and supports of political parties. And the whole process or processes would be likened to people hiding in fogs!
And what will happen if “Independent Candidates”, after being finally elected Councillors and Mayors and Chairpersons, are seen clad in party colours in 2023 and openly support Parliamentary and Presidential candidates? It would be laughably laughable because it would become funnily funny! And mind you, the new National Decentralization Policy is advocating that, “the Electoral Year of Mayors/Chairmen and Councillors be changed from 4 to 5 years.” So, are there prescribed penalties in the new Policy for members of Local Councils who would later evince the slightest sign of partisanship?
The SLPP’s would-be Independent Councillors/Mayors/Chairpersons charade is reminding me of the fabled baboon in Ayi Kwei Armah’s “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” who, whilst climbing higher to defecate on the people’s faces, doesn’t realise that the people have already seen its buttocks and have turned their faces in disguised laughter. The SLPP appears to be trying to slow down, or cushion, its eventual buttocks-kicking from the Seat of State in 2023 by conjuring every trick it believes will keep them in power.
For me, the new National Decentralization Policy could be likened to the Churchill-ian metaphor of the crocodile which the SLPP is now feeding with the hope that it will eat them last in 2023. The point is: No matter what political shenanigans the SLPP might have fathered at State House or mothered at State Lodge; 2023 will never be 2018!
medsankoh@yahoo.com +232-76-611-986
