By Umaru Fofana
May the year 2014 never return! May those who died rest in peace! May those of us still alive be saved! Sooner rather than later, may our leaders who would have responded more honestly and dutifully to our predicament but failed to do so get the fortitude to admit their wrongdoing which led to the letdown.
That said, in my last article – in 2014 – I wrapped up with the apparent war within the presidency of Sierra Leone. For the next three years leading to the next presidential election we are stuck with a president and a vice president who seem diametrically opposed to each other’s aspirations. How well this is handled – and it doesn’t seem to be being handled well right now – will largely determine which way goes the All People’s Congress’s desire to remain in office.
Never in the history of Sierra Leonean politics has a Vice President succeeded his boss – excepting of course during the military junta era of the National Provisional Ruling Council. Then the Deputy Chairman Julius Maada Bio took over from Valentine Strasser through undemocratic means – like they had come to power. Never in the history of Sierra Leone has a president disagreed with his vice president or his deputy as is panning out now – unless of course during the same NPRC regime which led to the palace coup. Not even when Ahmad Tejan Kabbah decided to drop Dr Albert Joe Demby as his running-mate in 2002 after serving as his vice president for one term was the acrimony as serious as the one currently going on between Ernest Bai Koroma and Samuel Chief Sam-Sumana. Kabbah replaced Dr Demby with his Attorney General, Solomon Berewa and the change had little consequence on the incumbent’s fate at the polls. I would say handling the Sam-Sumana question would have been easier and better dealt with in the run-up to the 2012 election than now. His supporters – and he has a lot of them – would have been a lot less angry at him being denied another term as vice president than as president which they now think – rightly or wrongly – that only Koroma stands in the way to achieving.
With the way things look and maybe ARE – junior government officials openly challenging the vice president without consequence – it appears the president is also very determined to not see his vice president succeed him as president or even party candidate. Sam-Sumana has – not once but twice – become the first vice president in an APC government who is not deputy leader of the party. The day Minkailu Mansaray was made that – and before him Chukuma Johnson – was the day I knew the political death knell had started sounding for the vice president. Interestingly there has been no tsunami within the party for that apparent rejection.
I was at the APC Makeni convention where Sam-Sumana was apparently forced to step down from the race. But having ostensibly assured him of his continued vice president position he had a fallback. Without a fallback – which will be the case should he be denied the leadership in a manner he would think to be unfair – Sam-Sumana may be forced to fight for his political life. How he does that and how much of the proverbial life of a cat he has will be quite interesting to watch.
This was exactly the dilemma that faced Charles Margai in 2005 when he was denied leadership of the SLPP by a president at the time who was similarly hell bent on having his own candidate for president. It is interesting that all those within the APC party in-country will be very tough sells with their electability in question.
There are some within the party who have told me that the possibility does exist that someone from the UN system will be considered to lead them. Well there are many working for the world body who are APC members but not sure of their names resonating in the political landscape of Sierra Leone or even general name recognition. You could argue, however, that the same could have been said about Ahmad Tejan Kabbah when the then rookie politician entered the fray in 1995.
This is one thing some members and supporters of the main opposition SLPP party who support a Kandeh Yumkella presidency would want to present as their trump card. With a glowing pedigree at the UN, they would argue, Sierra Leone stands to benefit a lot with their man at the helm. But not many were impressed with the leadership style of President Kabbah a UN graduate. His weak, indecisive and sometimes patronising approach to politics was out of this world. But for the largely mono-ethnic politics some believe has permeated our body politic in the last few years, history would be harsher with Kabbah and he would not be missed by many who miss him today.
The SLPP has let down the people of Sierra Leone by failing to hold to account a government that is deemed to be extremely self-serving, conceited and corrupt. Whoever becomes their presidential candidate – unless if the current government collapses like a pack of cards – will have a tough job to do in reuniting them and giving them relevance yet again to perform the role democracy expects it.
Like Sam-Sumana and the APC, the way Julius Maada Bio is handled will largely determine the political destination of the SLPP. His popularity among the rank and file members of the party is legendary. Not so for non-party members and supporters. I am not sure there is any potential presidential candidate of the SLPP who is disliked by non-supporters of the party as passionately as Bio is. You can apply the Wole Soyinka saying that “the ripest fruit is the saddest” – that Bio is being hounded because he is attractive. But to get candidates to rally round him within the party will be a tough ask even if not impossible – in the event he wins the leadership, again. I would say the party cannot win at the polls without Bio’s support for its candidate – but I would say it will be harder for the party to win with him as that candidate.
John Benjamin has declared his intention to lead the party at the next polls. Like Eddie Turay and the APC, JOB as he is fondly called has been with the SLPP through thick and thin. He could have long-crossed the political carpet like some of his former government colleagues in the SLPP did. But he stayed to prove his conviction even if allegations flew back and forth questioning his allegiance to the party. JOB’s last position in the SLPP government was finance minister – no mean feat. But his leadership of the party was fraught with probably the biggest civil war they have witnessed.
Andrew Kailli is one of the brain boxes in the SLPP. He is articulate, seemingly thorough, full of ideas and with a bipartisan appeal even if that does not appeal to our politics of bigotry and ethnicity. The engineer however has a very long way to go to take a successful shot in a rigorous presidential race. Again his appeal is centred only a small area of the southeast. But whoever gets him on their side will have a machine that functions – and very well too. And if they win they have an excellent energy minister in him.
I shall be coming up with more names as they emerge to lead our country which has tried and failed many times to get the right kind of leader whose loyalty is to the people – in words and in deeds – and not to special interests.
© Politico 13/01/15
