By Sallieu T. Kamara
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”, says that literary genius, William Shakespeare in one of his many plays, King Henry IV. Like King Henry IV, President Ernest Bai Koroma is feeling the weight of his “crown” today like never before. He is faced with the dilemma of choosing his running mate for the November 2012 elections without compromising his much touted values, and at the same time ensuring a resounding victory at the polls.
The president is also walking a tightrope on the selection of aspirants for party symbols to run under the banner of the APC in the upcoming parliamentary and local council elections across the country. There is now an apparently increasing feeling of loneliness at the top with, most likely, some sleepless nights for the president. This is all because the buck stops on his desk.
I had a privileged discussion with former president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in the company of other civil society activists in his house at Juba shortly after the 2007 presidential elections. He told us that one of the fundamental mistakes that the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) made and the one that contributed immensely to their defeat at the hands of the All People’s Congress (APC) was the late selection of the running mate. And this cannot be more true. The time between the picking of the running mate and polling day was so short that there was not enough time to properly and adequately address the vexatious issues that emerged from the process. So the SLPP went to the 2007 elections a divided party. Did President Ernest Bai Koroma learn any lesson from this?
From the way things are going within his APC party at the moment, it is apparent that President Koroma never learned anything from the unpardonable blunder of his opponents in 2007. If anything, how can he explain his continued silence over the choice of a running mate for the November elections, which has made the situation extremely worrying for many Sierra Leoneans especially those who support him or his APC party? Yes, he has a vice president at the moment, but, certainly, President Koroma does not have a running mate for the 2012 elections, yet. And the elections are less than eighty days away.
President Koroma should realize that by continuing to drag the process of picking his running mate, he is equally creating room for speculation, in-fighting and peddling of rumours and lies that might be dangerous for the well-being of the party, as well as raising undue expectations among its hierarchy. This could turn out to be a recipe for political turmoil.
By keeping quiet on such an important issue, President Koroma is raising high the hopes of many people within the party that have an innate desire to unseat the current Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana. This is the major cause for the undue tension and divisiveness that have become common characteristics of the once united party in recent times.
President Koroma entered the 2007 elections contest with Sam-Sumana as his running mate. Koroma brought him onboard as a surprised choice, as there were many other notable figures within the party such as Haja Hafsatu Kabba and Sahr John Yambasu who were gunning for the position. The choice of Sam-Sumana added very little value to the APC’s overall standing in the 2007 polls in Kono district, which is his birth place. The party performed very poorly and it was able to win only one parliamentary seat out of eight with Sam-Sumana himself losing out in the parliamentary contest that he had concurrently contested. But in the local council elections of the following year, the party recorded a sweeping victory, winning almost all the seats in the Kono New Sembehun City Council and the Kono District Council. Like Robin Van Persie announcing his arrival at Old Trafford with a magnificent strike, Sam-Sumana’s contribution towards this massive victory in Kono district reassured President Koroma that he, indeed, made the right choice.
But since he occupied the vice presidency after the 2007 elections, Sam-Sumana has become an embattled person. His name and his activities have almost always featured prominently in both the local and international media, many of them for all the wrong reasons that have cause the presidency and citizens of this country considerable embarrassment.
As the country moves closer towards the November 2012 elections so too are allegations of corruption and conflicts of interests being levelled against Sam-Sumana intensifying. Some of the allegations are so serious and damning that he was recently forced to convene his first ever press conference since he became vice president if only to clear his head. To some people, he achieved this objective, but to some others, his attempt to clear his head only opened the door for more questions to be asked.
Whilst all of this is happening, the people of Kono have now come to see the occupation of the vice presidency by their son and brother, Sam Sumana, as the most exciting prospect to have a Kono as president of Sierra Leone. He is now the embodiment of both their aspirations and hopes. It is this prospect that is driving the Kono people solidly behind Sam-Sumana. It, therefore, goes without saying that if President Koroma chooses not to have Sam-Sumana as his running-mate, his APC party could certainly lose the much-needed support/votes of Kono district. This could spell disaster for the party in the upcoming elections.
On the other hand, if President Koroma chooses to retain Sam Sumana as his running mate for the November polls, he is doing so at a high risk. This is because nobody knows whether more serious and more damning allegations are not in the incubator of mainly the opposition parties waiting for the appropriate time to be hatched and unleashed. The timing could be done in a way that there will not be sufficient room to clear the mess that such revelations will cause on the party. This is the dilemma that President Koroma is presently grappling with, at least from my reading of the situation.
But this is not the only problem that appears to be giving President Koroma some headache. It could be recalled that the way and manner the APC party awarded symbols for the 2007 parliamentary elections created a lot of confusion that almost tore the party apart. It took the swift intervention of some elders of the party like the late SAT Koroma to keep it together ahead of the elections. In all of this, Ernest Koroma pleaded with the aggrieved parties across the country and assured them that come 2012, they would be given the sole right and responsibility to choose who they would want to be awarded the party symbols. That was almost 60 months ago. Now, 2012 is here and everybody is looking forward to President Koroma to fulfil his promise and to see how he intends doing it.
In his quest to remain faithful to his promise, President Koroma introduced the Electoral College system, which is an initiative aimed at removing some power and responsibility from the hierarchy of the party at headquarters in Freetown and cede them to the mass membership in local communities across the country. The main objective of this initiative is to give the mass membership of the party the responsibility to choose their own candidates and present them to the leadership of the party for the award of symbols. By all indications, this is a brilliant initiative that will not only encourage citizens’ participation, but also make them very relevant in the governance of their political party.
Good as it is, President Koroma alone cannot ensure the satisfactory delivery of this initiative. He relies on the leadership of the party to make his dream a reality. He cannot go on the ground and personally supervise and facilitate the setting-up of the Electoral Colleges across the country. He cannot move from constituency to constituency facilitating and overseeing the selection of candidates for the awards of party symbols. He places his trust and confidence on his people. But, it appears that, those he trusted so much has again failed him. Whilst President Koroma is relishing the successful completion of the exercise, his trusted men and women are busy criss-crossing the country manipulating the process to suit their own individual political aspirations.
Some have even gone ahead to choose their own people as candidates for the award of party symbols against the will of the people in the constituencies. There is hue and cry all over the country. The complaints of the people whose rights have once again been stolen from them are coming in droves. They want the president to take action to dismantle the barriers that are keeping them perpetually on the fringes of party activities. They have vowed to sever their relationships with the party, at least for these elections, if this is not done.
What this tells us is that the present crop of MPs representing the APC has not only failed their people, but have also betrayed the very trust the President placed in them by awarding them party symbols in 2007. They have not fulfilled the promises they made to their people and, in fact, some of them were not serious about fulfilling them. And the people have become fed up with them and are desirous of seeing their backs. But despite their poor performances, these MPs want to continue to hold on. They will not stop at anything to ensure they get the party symbol. This is the main source of the confusion that is plaguing the Electoral College system.
This is another dilemma for President Koroma. If he chooses to reverse the process in order to satisfy the aggrieving people, his trusted men and women could feel offended; they could accuse him of undermining their integrity in the eyes of the public and this could open another Pandora Box within the party that could not augur well for the chances of the party in the forthcoming elections. If, on the other hand, he does not take action on the concerns that the people have raised, there is the likelihood the party will lose valuable grassroots votes in the upcoming elections. The decisions are for him to take. May he take the right decisions!
