By Umaru Fofana
It came in the back of an amendment by parliament of a section of the country's constitution which many thought would have formed the main talking point in the week to follow. It was not to be. But please bear that in mind as we go along. A shocking high court ruling that pulverised majority vote. An Appeals Court ruling that let off the hook a former cabinet minister convicted for corruption. An administrative reshuffle that sends all sorts of signals. Bla, bla, bla. So here we go:
On Monday 25 November 2013, after a year on a matter that should have long been laid to rest, a high court in Freetown gave a shocking albeit not surprising ruling in a matter involving Constituencies 05 and 15 in the opposition strongholds of Kailahun and Kenema districts. Ever since the people voted in those constituencies in mid November last year they have been without representation in Parliament. In the case of the former, a now-former member of the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party had sought a court injunction against the candidacy of Ansu Lansana from running for the party (at his expense) because he faulted his eligibility to do so. The petitioner later joined the ruling All People's Congress party and brought virtually his entire family to declare with him at State House. A ceremony I was present at.
Conventional reasoning would make you believe that the way to go would be to take the party and its candidate to court if only to enforce internal democracy within their ranks - if you believe in that party and what it stands for - or to leave the party and let go of the matter altogether. But the petitioner in this case chose to do both. In the end Justice A. Showers ruled that he had no case against Lansana. However, somewhat incomprehensibly, the same judge ruled that Lansana, who got more than 11,000 votes (over 80%) should have all his votes nullified. The APC candidate, Regina Songa who polled less than 2,000 votes, should be declared winner. The electoral duly did, in a matter of hours.
The basis of the judge's ruling is that Lansana had breached an earlier court order of 16 November 2012 "by holding himself out as the candidate for SLPP...while the action herein was being heard". This is ludicrous, to say the least. 16 November 2012 was just hours before polls were to open and the ballot papers had already been printed and dispatched to all the corners of the country. That injunction, like this ruling, at the very least raises questions about the dispensation of justice in our country.
Justice Showers also ruled that the SLPP, NEC and the PPRC "breached the injunction granted by this court by putting forward and/or accepting the 1st Defendant herein as the candidate for the SLPP..." What could NEC or the PPRC have done for the same reason - after printing all the ballots and dispatching them! Or may be yes, NEC should have put off the parliamentary election in those constituencies. But instead of doing so, the NEC boss, Christiana Thorpe was on local radio warning, or even threatening voters in the affected constituencies, on the day of voting, not to cast their ballot for the said candidates and that if they did they would be nullified. Don't that threat and the court ruling of last week add up to anything? I am just wondering.
In the case of Constituency 15, BM Kamanda probably did what was a bit more sensible. He did not join another political party. After all, like MaCarthy in Constituency 05, he had represented the SLPP in parliament and both men had no questions or qualms about what it stood for - if anything - until they were rejected by the party's members in the constituency.
Kamanda, who rather chose to run as an independent candidate, remained in the party, as far as I know, and went to court on grounds that he was unfairly denied a symbol at the primaries. The same judge ruled that he had no case against Afiju Kanja, the person who won the party's symbol and eventually polled the highest number of votes cast - over 9,000 - against the APC candidate Leonard Fofana who got around 4,000 votes.
NEC duly obliged in the same week and proclaimed the MPs-by-default. In my view, in the most extreme of circumstances, Justice Showers should have ordered a rerun in both constituencies since there was no case against the two candidates but the fact that he had issues with them because of that unenforceable injunction on the eve of voting day. I have been left thinking as to what the ruling would have been had the SLPP been in power or had such happened in the APC stronghold involving APC candidates.
Such is how our judiciary behaves sometimes that it leaves justice at the mercy of those in power and sentences the less powerful to purgatory even before they die and spent all their life serving God. The repercussion on the declared winners and the reaction of voters in those constituencies who have effectively had voice drowned out so unfairly, in my view, can be guessed. The relationship between the new MPs and their constituents can be easily imagined. G0od save our peace as even the pacifist, Martin Luther King Jr once said violence is the voice of the unheard.
Add to this ruling the fact that with the two seats the APC now has a two-thirds majority in view of the fact that the Paramount Chief Members of Parliament, whose membership of the House is as confused as it is unnecessary, almost always vote alongside the party in power. Even the constitution can now be changed to suit the governing party should it wish to. Add to this, also, the amendment by parliament of Section 79 and the fact that the Speaker of Parliament is all but replaced in what seems like a well choreographed Palace Coup sponsored from outside the House.
Then came the morning of Friday 29 November. The Appeals Court proved yet again that something is fundamentally wrong with our fight against corruption. It acquitted the former Minister of Marine Resources, Haja Affsatu Kabbah, who the high court had convicted for corruption, with strong evidence. In my view, this acquittal seems to suggest either of the following: that the high court is vindictive by having convicted people when it should not have, or that the appeals court is pliable because there is not much attention on it from the public for scrutiny; or perhaps a proof that the ACC's prosecutors are in bed 23 hours daily not doing due diligence but rather basking in their huge salaries and proving worse than they have already proved to be. Or in fact a combination of all. And this selective fight against corruption is not new even if one would have thought that with the toughened ACC Act of 2008 more seriousness would have been put into it and less manipulation could be going on.
Momoh Pujeh was Minister of Transport under the administration of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah which set up the ACC. He was arrested on the orders of the commission under very interesting circumstances. While he remained locked in a police cell the ACC issued a press release that he was being investigated for corruption offences; something they had refused to do after another minister, Osman Kamara had secretly taped conversation with a businessman attempting to bribe him. That matter was covered up and the trade minister did get the backing of even his boss. Yet he stayed on. He did not resign in protest at such fundamental breach of decency and honesty.
Pujeh was convicted for corruption and sentenced to jail. His jailterm was supended. He appealed and was, as bizarrely as the Affsatu Kabbah case, acquitted in the face of overwhelming evidence. Later he was awarded a party symbol to go to Parliament. He won. And he became Minority Leader until his demise. We await the reappointment of Haja Affsatu Kabbah. So much for the fight against corruption and impunity in Sierra Leone!
On the same Friday, this time at night, there was a reshuffle of some sort of the administration. In an already large government, at least two new posts were created at a time when the country cannot afford its wage bills. And some of the appointments range from the sublime to the ridiculous. So has the reaction been. And in a country whose parliament is not known for pruning appointments, they are all but certain to sail through.
To me perhaps the most interesting reaction to the appointments has been to that of Omrie Golley's. The former spokesman of the ruthless Revolutionary United Front rebels is Ambassador-designate to South Korea. That is what is on the minds of most of those who have criticised his appointment. Perhaps justifiably so. But as someone who worked at the United Nations Mission (UNAMSIL) at the time, Golley proved to be as instrumental to the peace process as head of the RUF's Peace Council, as he had been in defending the despicable acts of the zombies called RUF rebels. But is he alone? Certainly not!
It is easier to count people in leadership positions since the war without blood on their hands than those with their hands soiled with the red liquid. Too many to count. Golley's appointment may be galling, but here is this: Unlike Golley who did not directly take a life, some actually killed and are in the corridors of power. Unlike them, Golley was constantly engaged in bringing back peace to the country as Chairman of the RUF's Peace Council. Unlike some others, Golley is extremely intelligent and well educated. Unlike others, he is not and does not see himself as an integral part of the APC and so can be reined in on should he go overboard and should decency be required by and at the top. How many others in government have proved clearly that they are above the law simply because they think their ancestors founded and owned the party. So somebody should leave Golley alone or we cleanse him alongside everyone else in power and let's see where that leaves us.
My real concern about Golley's appointment is whether the only reason for his appointment to Seoul, of all places, is because he went to South Korea, somehow incomprehensibly, and struck a deal for some money for something. So that warrants Sierra Leone to appoint an ambassador to that country for the first time in its history and all the expenses that go with that! I ask not least because that country has not had an ambassador here since the 1970s and there is nothing spectacular happening there in the interest of Sierra Leone, except that they have pledged to give some money towards building a City Hall in Freetown. Well we all better be ready to look for money anywhere anyhow under the guise of anything and be appointed Ambassador the next day.
Now, whatever the disagreement one may have with President Ernest Bai Koroma relative to his appointments - latest and previous - there is one thing they cannot take away from him. More than any other leader of this country before him, he has put a lot of young people in positions of trust. We can open a fresh argument over that in relation to the calibre of some of these appointees who are completely clueless and/or out of their breath on issues they are supposed to be presiding over, but young people in position of trust they nevertheless are. And so also are some of the older folks who have been appointed anyway -clueless, mindless and with a murky past. This is in sharp contrast to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah under whose presidency the most essential criterion for appointment, it seemed, was to be a sexagenarian. I believe the average age of his appointments must have been on the high side of 50 years (quinquagenarians). With some at death's door - age wise.
Koroma's shakeup on the night of Friday had a bit of a tinge of this, perhaps standing out the most perhaps being his choice of Deputy Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union. Ismael Koroma may have had some unorthodoxy in the start to the attainment of his current status, like many of us did, but he has made a heck of a good meal of it. He has striven hard and worked diligently to bring himself to where he is even minus his latest appointment. With a bit of supervision, he is up to scratch and can make a good ambassador for our country. And the fact that there is a lot happening in Addis Ababa including, obviously the headquarters of the African Union and the presence there of the Economic Commission for Africa, he will be busy and I trust he will rise up to the occasion. But generally, and this applies to our overall foreign postings, it will make a lot of difference having been identified for an ambassadorial posting, that such people are sent to some foreign policy school abroad to be better prepared for the job and perhaps make it a career. Just thinking aloud for future ambassadorial appointments and best practise.
But the appointments on the whole leave the age-old accusation of Koroma's job enrolment being a deeply northern thing. I know there has been some difficulty in securing some of the best brains from the southeast considering the dichotomisation of our country's body politic. He must however make more effort to address this and not pay attention to his hawkish northern clique lest his political epitaph will be written by someone as opposed to him as Solomon Berewa or Maada Bio, two people who see him as the undoing of their presidential ambitions.
My biggest fear: replacing Siray Timbo as the head of the National Telecommunications Commission (NATCOM). That is an act too hard to follow and an odyssey too demanding to embark on for his successor. The new NATCOM man needs Siray's coolness combined with the newly acquired deft and depth by the architect.
Whatever happens, the events of last week could have just come too fast to comprehend. Or maybe not. Add them up: a Speaker eligibility criteria changed to apparently get rid of the current holder of the post, a high court ruling to give the ruling party a two-thirds majority in parliament, an Appeals court ruling quashing an earlier conviction of a former minister for corruption and an administrative shakeup that is indifferent and deferential all in one. Make your conclusions. What a week last week was in our beloved Sierra Leone.
(C) Politico 03/12/13
