By Stephen T. Fomba
Some of the early Sierra Leone political parties and community-based organizations that transformed to political parties were established before Sir Milton Margai was elected the nation’s first Chief Minister in 1954. As a matter of fact, political parties like People’s Party, Sierra Leone National Party, and People’s National Party (PNP) and national organizations like the Protectorate Education Progressive Union (PEPU) and Sierra Leone Organisation Society (SOS) were established years before the first major elections in 1951 and 1957. Despite the advent of multiparty democracy in Sierra Leone, the elephants in the room—Milton Margai, Albert Margai, and Siaka Stevens—quickly formed political factions to control politics forever.
The emergence of People’s Party, PEPU and SOS established the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in 1951. When Albert Margai fell out with his elder brother, Milton, despite defeating him in the SLPP leadership race in 1957, he teamed up with Siaka Stevens, who was also a founding member of SLPP, to form the PNP. When Siaka Stevens fell out with PNP after challenging the Independence Before Elections agreement with the United Kingdom, he joined others to form the All People’s Congress (APC), shortly after forming the Elections Before Independence Movement (EBIM). Albert Margai returned to SLPP and the fight of the giants of Sierra Leone began.
SLPP and APC have dominated Sierra Leone politics for a combined total of almost 70 years. In those seven decades, Sierra Leoneans have experienced various types of injustices, high level of corruption, poverty, tyrannical one-party state, decade-long civil war, an Ebola outbreak, weak public institutions, political violence, ineffective healthcare sector, undemocratic practices by the powers that be, vote rigging, high unemployment rates, feeble private sector, failed educational system, preventable natural disasters, electricity shortages, lack of access to clean drinking water, and many other socioeconomic crises. Despite these challenges and the emergence of third parties, Sierra Leoneans return to the ballot boxes election after election to vote the same parties to power.
Many attempts have been made by third parties to replace SLPP and APC as alternatives but have failed to persuade voters to abandon their familiar parties. The failure to topple the two oldest parties may not be a controllable fault of the third parties, but rather systemic factors that make achieving their political aspirations implausible. From experience and research, I have narrowed challenges that have beset third parties to five reasons why it is difficult to unseat SLPP and APC in Sierra Leone.
Winner-takes-all
The first challenging factor is the winner-takes-all political system. This is an electoral system in which governmental seats are awarded only to the party that receives the most votes in elections and controls government from the seat of the chief executive, president or equivalent position. In Sierra Leone this means the party that wins the presidency (ruling party) controls the executive branch of government and forms a cabinet that reflects mostly, if not entirely, the colors and interests of that party. It also means the two major parties control almost all legislative power, which makes the presence of third parties almost insignificant. Because of the winner-takes-all system, third parties struggle to stay afloat the tides of opposition, a period when many drown and disappear.
Lack of resources
The lack of resources or challenges to raise needed capitals is another reason third parties struggle against SLPP and APC. Money and human capital are the most important resources third parties need to compete, as political success is dependent on numbers (supporters) and money. Because elections of any kind in Sierra Leone, like other parts of the world, are very expensive – taking into consideration candidacy fees and campaign expenses – the financial strength of political parties is pivotal to winning elections. Third parties struggle to finance elections because of their limited funding pool. Raising funds is a serious challenge for third parties, especially because Sierra Leone does not have the culture of citizens-sponsored politics. And the few individual donors play safe politics by supporting the two major parties for protection and political benefits.
Third parties also struggle with human resource; an electoral base that helps with campaigning, dissemination of information, voting, vote protection, and other types of relevant support. Because a large majority of voters would have identified with a political party by choice or tradition—family, tribe, region etc.—by the time third parties form, it makes it difficult for voters to change their political affiliations because of deep-sowed loyalty, sense of belonging to a larger cause, and fear, as it relates to safety. Third parties thus settle for the few disgruntled citizens who leave one of two major parties and the infinitesimal number of independent voters. The challenge is made even more difficult by the many third parties who fish in the same pond for voters, usually three to four times as many as the major parties.
Perception of power-sharing
The next contributing factor to third-party failure is voter perception of a shared power system. It is a common belief in Sierra Leone, especially among SLPP and APC supporters, that the two major parties share power, so much that they take turns governing the country, including the presidency. Even with the SLPP and Sir Milton Margai’s popularity prior and after independence in 1961, APC replaced them in 1967. And many Sierra Leoneans argue that but for the one-party state declaration by President Stevens, SLPP could have replaced APC in the late 70s. SLPP defeated APC in 1996; APC replaced SLPP in 2007; and SLPP replaced APC in 2018; All largely because the two parties are almost equal in strength by region and ethnicity which are the bedrocks of their support. This view is reinforced by the two major parties to remain dominant over third parties.
Success has many children
Fourth is the likelihood of success. It does not require ingenuity to conclude that the major parties are most likely to succeed in any democratic society than third parties, including in Sierra Leone. The likelihood of SLPP and APC winning elections, especially the presidency, is reason majority of voters choose to support the “winning” sides. Even when third parties have innovative and sustainable solutions to politico-socioeconomic problems, voters choose to support issues that are of interest to the major parties as they are more likely to win elections. For many voters the decision to vote for the major parties is for personal benefits; the hope to climb the social mobility ladder through political connections. The view of a third party winning majority in Parliament and the presidency is labeled as a “waste of vote.” This probability calculation is reason the major parties don’t take third parties seriously, which urges voters to not “waste” their votes.
Political familiarity
The fifth and final reason third parties fail to dethrone major parties is the awareness and relationship voters have with well-known political parties—politics of familiarity. Politics of familiarity is the participation of voters in support of political parties they know very well by tradition. Tradition here is defined as political practices of a voter’s family, tribe, geographic location, and other ethnic sentiments. Politics of familiarity does not take into account political ideology or philosophy, but guided simply by the connection voters have with and their understanding of the affiliated parties. Politics of familiarity makes it very difficult for third parties to win the hearts of supporters and sympathizers of SLPP and APC, hence the difficulty of winning large number of seats in Parliament let alone the presidency.
According to Professor Ibrahim Abdullah, a well-respected and renowned Sierra Leone historian, “history of third parties suggests they’re constructed around an individual and etched as ethnic enclaves with programs not too dissimilar from the two dominant parties.” It is therefore imperative for third parties to form around ideologies or philosophies that are different from those of the SLPP and APC, being highly appealing across ethno-regional lines and innovative in addressing and solving the nation’s socioeconomic issues with sustainable development initiatives.
It would also benefit the country to consider replacing the winner-takes-all political system with a proportional representative system that is uniquely appropriate for Sierra Leone, sharing power with third parties. By so doing, Sierra Leone could significantly reduce irrelevant political divisions, increase accountability in government, build an effective national development coalition, and utilize the untapped knowledge of third-party technocrats.
Lastly, citizens should take strong interest in knowing their third parties, give them support if they bear merit as better alternatives to the major parties, and allow not politics of familiarity to be the primary influence of how they vote.
© 2019 Politico Online
