By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
Looking at the political landscape of Sierra Leone, it gives the impression that it has grown better from what it was 10 to 15 years ago. However, this growth may have been exaggerated a bit, given several indications of a broken governance system; a system in which the entire power structure of all the three arms of government have been fused into one - State House.
Democracy is like a machine. A machine works effectively because of the collective work of different components. In the case of governance some of these components are press freedom, civil society, political parties, governance institutions, and of course all the three arms of government (judiciary, executive and legislature). All these components need to work properly for a country to have an effective democracy in motion.
In the case of Sierra Leone this has hardly been the case in the last few years, say commentators. The Audit Service Sierra Leone is a government agency that is responsible to audit the finances of government ministries and agencies. Every year upon the completion of their audit exercise they publish a report, which for the last three years had exposed funds misappropriation and shortages worth over billions of Leones. But like always the government would just let the public outrage die down, sweep the whole report under the rug and continue with business as usual. This is why it was not a surprise for most of us when the Auditor General published a report on the use of Ebola funds and Members of Parliament (MPs) were implicated.
Then Parliament went ahead to play the boss man card and scared the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) away and swept the case aside in the name of investigation.
Well, with the ACC boss himself being rumored to be interested in running for the presidency in the coming election, one would wonder how much that affected his chances of really fighting parliament over that case.
Meanwhile, the unexplained use of hundreds of millions of Leones of Ebola funds by MPs, politicians, civil servants and other citizens is currently causing the suffering of Ebola affected victims and survivors in a place like Segbewma, Kailahun District and all across the country. If a report as serious as the Auditor General’s could be swept under the carpet by the government year in year out, then it would be safe to say that the government is not treating the issue of accountability seriously.
But a situation like this may have happened because of the lack of a strong and vibrant opposition party, argues Valnora Edwin, Executive Director of the civil society group Campaign for Good Governance (CGG).
“Strong opposition parties will bring out sound policies,” she told Politico.
“They get to check the excesses of the government of the day, they help keep a simple checks and balance in play and give the citizenry choice,” she said.
Strong opposition
So many happenings recently have dampened public confidence in the main opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), which happens to be the only opposing voice in Parliament. Numerically they are outnumbered and internally they are divided into God knows how many camps and this just throws away any fighting chance they have to the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC).
In all that division the APC benefits the most. Little wonder they fought tooth and nail to keep the Minority Leader, Dr Bernadette Lahai, in place, much to the disapproval of the majority of the party leadership.
Imagine the irony, APC fighting together with Lahai to keep her spot in the SLPP team against the wishes of her fellow parliamentarians. The stench of conspiracy is all over the place.
The bottom line is they cannot touch her, because she took the case to court and predictably won an injunction on her removal.
In the last two years Lahai had gone from being a strong critic of the ruling party’s policies in parliament to their cheerleader. Recently she got an overwhelming support and endorsement from the government which led her to win the Vice Presidency of the ECOWAS parliament. The question on many lips is: was the support from the government driven by genuine nationalism or was it a reward for a job well done in parliament.
It is no secret that Sierra Leone has no serious third force in terms of political opposition. The two parties that came close to serving that purpose - the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) and United Democratic Movement (UDM), have all failed spectacularly. PMDC came in to the political scene in 2007 and contested the general elections that year. They got 13.9% of the total vote cast in the country and won 10 parliamentary seats. More than 95% of their votes and all 10 parliamentary seats were won in SLPP strongholds, which is the southeast region of the country.
To date, many argue that the PMDC factor was the major reason the SLPP lost the 2007 elections and the mathematics had supported that claim, considering the fact that SLPP just needed 6% to get the required 51% majority that year.
Five years later, PMDC became almost irrelevant in the political scene. They got a mere 1.3% in the 2012 multi tier elections and lost all their parliamentary seats, most of the seats were lost even before elections. APC poached some of their MPs away by giving them jobs. Only God knows their fate come next election.
From the beginning, the UDM had been like a surrogate party to the APC. Their former leader, Mohamed Bangura, spent and to spend more time praise-singing President Koroma than preaching his party’s ideology across to Sierra Leoneans. The last general election UDM contested was in 2012 and they got 5069 votes nationwide, that was 0.2% of the voter turnout. With Bangura now officially an APC member, you start to wonder if the UDM could survive till the next election.
Civil society
Civil society pressure on issues is not coherent. They all have their own agendas. Politicians support these CSOs, the critical ones are labeled anti government and the compromised ones are labeled pro government.
Democracy is taking a worrying trend in Sierra Leone. You cannot blame the government alone for this. All the components in the democratic machinery have to function properly. But again, at the end of it all the government is responsible to create that platform.
Cajoling politicians to desert their parties to join them, funding CSOs to promote selfish agendas will starve this country’s democracy of opposition.
Every thriving democracy in the world relies heavily on the role of opposing stand points and checks and balances and Sierra Leoneans certainly want theirs to thrive as well.
(C) Politico 21/12/15
