By Umaru Fofana
How hard is it to have a fixed date or week for our presidential election as it is in the United States? The 90-day discretion the president of Sierra Leone has to decide an election date after the end of his five-year mandate is such that the recent history has shown that almost the entire three-month period has been used since the 1991 constitution has been in use.
If we had a fixed date to elect our president, we would be sure we would never go to the polls around Christmas or during the heavy downpour – depending on when the elections are fixed for. But as things stand, in the next few elections we will go to the polls around Christmas or New Year or at the height of the rainy season with all the ramifications on the terrible road network in the provinces and the strain on voters.
That electoral elasticity is probably what creeps into the country’s party elections. I have often wondered what makes it difficult for our political parties – especially the main ones that are represented in parliament – to be holding regular delegates’ conferences at fixed dates or months in the year, every year.
Wouldn’t it be really cool if at a particular time of the year we expected and prepared for delegates’ conferences or conventions of parties and listened out for their plans? Then, we would listen out for plans by the parties to enable us know which way to go by way of political inclination? But also so that we were sure we would never go to the polls around Christmas or during the heavy downpour. I know I am dreaming because ours are political parties etched into tribal or regional cleavages. But something has to be done to turn things around.
In dribs and drabs today you hear the leadership of a party proposing to hold an executive committee meeting to precede a national delegates’ conference. The next day you hear it has been put off. Or you hear someone going to court challenging an alleged breach of the constitution in the convening of a delegates’ conference, and so on and so forth.
In the United Kingdom for example there is a party conference season lasting three weeks from September to October every year. In that time the political parties hold their national delegates’ conferences almost without fail. So the Labour Party hold their conference in the last week of September, while the Conservative or Tory party hold theirs every year around October.
In fact the Liberal Democrats hold their own Federal Conference, as it is called, twice every year – the Spring Conference in March and the Autumn Conference in September.
During a political party’s delegates’ conference there are debates that shape the future of the party. They set their agenda for the following year. They discuss mobilization. Young or new leaders are given the chance to shine – not the same old dinosaurs leading things every now and again having been there since Jesus was here on earth. Consequently they strengthen internal democracy. We all know how Barack Obama wowed the Democratic National Convention in 2004. If he had been a Sierra Leonean belonging to any of our parties he would never have been given that stage to shine. Envy by stupid old politicians would have buried him even before he was born – politically speaking that is.
At Sierra Leone’s political party conventions hardly are there debates on key issues on nationhood. Hardly are there papers presented on the present state and future course of the party and the country in a way that does not serve someone’s bidding. Above all it is all merrymaking – be they government or opposition parties, not least the former.
The weak state of internal democracy within our country’s political parties is such that party leaders can decide to sleep and wake up with new changes to the party constitution, new dates for executive committee meetings or delegates’ conferences which are changed at the whims and caprices of the leadership of the party.
So much so that from a media coverage point of view you are never certain about when to plan for party conferences or conventions. One moment there is a date, another moment the date is changed. It is open to more abuse when the party is in power. Then it can afford to use the status and power of the president to lord it over its members.
While in opposition, a political party here tends to listen more to reasoning. It is a real breath of fresh air that the All People’s Congress have so far stuck to their date. And if for some reason it is changed, it will not be because the leadership wants to have it their way. That would have been a far cry if they were in power.
Invariably the SLPP would have been hit with a series of litigation if they were in opposition for reasons ranging from the date and venue changes to their national delegates conference, to the move to have the president or presidential candidate also as the Leader of the party.
These things should be a matter of set rules to regulate the behavior of party leaders and members, and not to leave it with the leadership to do as they wish. My father would tell me that a chief should not pass a law when they are angry at someone. For when they calm down the law would affect them or a close associate.
I am not sure what proposals the Political Parties’ Registration Commission has had kept in the shelves of parliament as a way of seeking an amendment to the Act that established it, but it would be heartening to include compelling political parties to hold regular delegates’ conferences at a particular time of the year. That time can be spread across a three-month period within which all political parties that have existed for more than one year must call their delegates to a convention.
Often we concentrate on the two oldest political parties of SLPP and APC – and rightly so since only they, barring the military, have ruled the country since independence. The reason parties like UNPP of Dr John Karefa-Smart, PDP-Sorbeh of Thaimu Bangura and PMDC of Charles Margai all died a natural death was that they were established around, for and about an individual, as well as the lack of a proper internal system hence allowing them to behave like the older ones.
This is where we had hoped that parties like the C4C and NGC would have made a departure from, especially the latter. But since the elections of early last year, we are approaching two years and no national delegates’ conference has been held. The parties only function when there is a by-election. It does not help our democracy. The highest decision-making body in any political party is the national delegates’ conference. They must therefore not be scorned or even conned as they sometimes are. Party leadership must not behave arbitrarily. They must behave as obliged by law.
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