By Umaru Fofana
After nibbling around the edges for over a week, it emerged this week following the arrest of the mayor of Bo, Harold Tucker that the real talk all this while goes beyond an “illegal gathering”. Or even a mutiny. The mayor of the country’s second city is suspected by police to have taken part in an “illegal meeting” with soldiers that bore the hallmarks of an intent to overthrow the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma. Tucker actually told me on phone shortly after he had been temporarily released after a brief detention for questioning that the police used the words “plotting a coup to overthrow President Koroma”.
That was ten days after an unspecified number of soldiers and other military men had been arrested in Makeni on allegations of an “illegal gathering” that was said to be tantamount to a mutiny. So it begs the question: who wants to overthrow President Ernest Bai Koroma. I can bet my life and say, NOBODY!
But for an opposition that is in disarray, some members and supporters of the SLPP have sometimes sounded so hysterical – even childish – in all this that they have started navel-gazing and having a sense of self-pity that they are the target of some old era politics. So much so that they have started behaving like a ram that sees someone with a knife and begins to think it is the Muslim Eid of Adha – or feast of sacrifice. I have said it time and time again that if Siaka Stevens were to come back alive today he cannot rule Sierra Leone for more than one week – hypertension will kill him or force him to resign. In this day of mobile phones, internet and community radio stations dotted all over the country how can anyone imagine that people can be framed up in such a way.
While I think that investigations should be allowed to go on unhindered, I cannot help but ask myself who in their right-thinking mind would want to overthrow President Koroma. I ask not only because of his popularity – and I bet he is – but also because the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces are so trained and restructured that it would be foolhardy for them to think of a coup. Forget about the international reaction, the people of this country proved in 1997 that they would no longer allow soldiers to seize power through unconstitutional means. Some of those in power today know what I am talking about because they were key players in the coup. And those in the opposition also know this because they were the beneficiaries of the people’s resistance at the time.
If the state, represented by the top echelons of the army and the police force, believes that some coup was being hatched by those people being detained, how can investigations be compromised by informing the public about who they are and how many of them there are holding. Conventional reason would dictate that the identity should be kept so their partners in crime would not know they are under detention and flee. But the reality is that if any coup was being planned the partners in crime of these detainees would know exactly those who have been arrested. So that makes no sense to me.
Now, the nation is on tenterhooks. We have been held spellbound with conjectures and speculations as to who are being held and why. The least such anxiety can do is to scare investors away from the country. Or worse it can cause so much tension that the security of the state is further compromised.
Soldiers have complained to me, for example, that when they are on peacekeeping their bosses back home slash off their pay a certain percentage. And when they return more is deducted. The top of the military knows this and have failed to act either because they are a part of the syndicate or they are failing to look into the welfare of their subordinates.
My sources have told me that soldiers are unhappy about their living conditions. The internal redress mechanism in the armed forces is ineffective leading to so much disenchantment among them against some of their top bras. That should not be deemed to mean that they will do anything stupid such as plot a coup. We will all be willing and prepared to resist that as a people. Far more so that we are holding the elected government to account.
Our soldiers cannot afford to ruin the respect they enjoy from the people and their reputation abroad in view of their international peacekeeping efforts to plot a coup. Again I bet my life on that. And the civilians will be embarking on something suicidal to ever dream of doing that. The SLPP will be relegated to the dustbin of history were they to be imagined to be a part of a military takeover especially at this time. Such an enterprise will be condemned with far more unanimity than the ARFC one was.
But it leaves one pondering why the government would want to feign a military coup. It leaves me to believe one thing albeit in part. When I visited Makeni recently I heard it in some quarters that some soldiers (I cannot be specific about them at this time) at the Tekko Barracks had asked the commanding officer for a meeting among. He allegedly approved of it and asked the Information Officer to sit in the meeting. Again this is subject to further investigation so I cannot tell more, except that the soldiers highlighted some of their concerns.
It may well be that the top bras in the army who are used to papering over the cracks and creating a semblance of honky dory among their officers and men and women even where their basic needs are being ignored, tried to create some instability and used the word MUTINY which has now metamorphosed to a COUP. Taking the attention away from themselves and creating an atmosphere of panic.
It would be good for the government to properly investigate the relationship in the army between the top and the bottom. It is simply unsatisfactory. And it could lead to pent up anger which will definitely not translate to a coup but rather some dissent of some sort aimed at innocent civilians under cover.
Sometimes I am left with the feeling that those who advise the president are in only for the money and the power and authority. Not to make things really work or for the benefit of the nation. I dare say that there was NO PLAN or meeting to overthrow the government. It is a smokescreen by either some stupid politicians or some greedy senior military officers. All this leaves me wondering whether about the unnecessary secrecy and all that, making me wonder whether all the sacrifice we made against dictatorship and military rule went in vain. In other words, our politicians remain the buffoons they have always been.
(C) Politico 29/08/13
