By Ibrahim Tommy
After weeks of a
standoff between the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and seven of the country’s ten political parties over the astronomical nomination fees, they were finally reduced to the 2007 levels on September 13, following a meeting at State House between President Koroma, the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC), and representatives of political parties.
Apart from the ruling All People's Congress (APC), the United Democratic Movement (UDM), and the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), all the other parties had roundly objected to Christiana Thorpe’s nomination fees which ranged from Le100 million for presidential candidates, Le10 million for parliamentary candidates, to Le1 million for councillors.
It is safe to suggest that it was clearly an unpopular idea, but despite pleas from civil society organizations and other international bodies, it
required President Koroma’s intervention to get a reversal. By the way, was it actually a reversal? I’ll get to this point later on. Christiana Thorpe and the Sierra Leone Parliament were better placed to understand that it was a clearly unpopular move, and should have therefore been the ones making the extra efforts to reverse/revise the fees list. After Thorpe had been pressured into revising the original nomination fees list, she was probably no more ready to have her ego further pulverized by “conceding defeat” to the opposition. Someone just whispered into my ears that Christiana Thorpe and our parliamentarians had been watching SLBC’s “Inside the Media” programme, where some journalists-turned-politicians were purposefully justifying the astronomical fees. No wonder!
Anyway, like many other national issues, it was unfortunate that President Koroma had to intervene before the fees could be reversed/revised. I say unfortunate because it seems to me that hardly anything shakes, much less move forward in this country without the President’s say-so. It seems to me that public officials are either over reliant on the president’s counsel or feel completely incapable of making the tough calls when they are required to do so. It is even worse when you have a parliament that sees national issues only through the prism of their respective political parties.
The nomination fees issue was certainly a big one, but it could have been easily addressed if Thorpe and our parliamentarians had listened well and shown a bit of respect for numerous voices against the fees. Is it that they refused to act because they had not received calls from the
President? In the end, it had to be President Koroma who could come up with a “solution”. Not our parliamentarians! Not NEC! Who then needs NEC and Parliament when you have the President of Sierra Leone?
The fact that public officials are for the most part hesitant to make even the easiest decisions without recourse to the presidency or some senior politician has been a major impediment to national development efforts in Sierra Leone, and it seems to me that it’s getting worse all the time. It is obvious that the country desperately needs a critical mass of professionals - who truly understand that their fiduciary lies with the state – and not with politicians; a corps of professionals who understand that it is only when their decisions and actions best reflect the interests of Sierra Leone that our development challenges can be effectively addressed. Let’s face it: there is so much sycophancy and idolization of politicians in this country that it will require a complete change of mindset to make any significant progress at the national level. Otherwise, we will be discussing the same issues for a very long time in this country.
So the President finally made an undertaking on behalf of the Government of Sierra Leone to top-up Christiana Thorpe’s nomination fees. It sounds inconceivable to me that Christiana Thorpe’s only publicly stated justification for increasing the fees was to ensure that politicians contribute significantly to the budget of the 2012 elections. The total nomination fees would have amounted to 23% of total budget for the elections. She made an even more confusing rationalization of the whole affair when she said politicians ought to subsidize tax payers’ money used to fund elections.
Thorpe and the Sierra Leone Parliament must understand that part of the reason the government collects taxes, among other revenue mobilization efforts, is to promote democratic processes such as elections. A successful electoral process gives elected officials an opportunity to serve the country, even though a legitimate argument can be made that they have hardly put the interests of the country first. So the President, parliamentarians, councilors, and Paramount Chiefs are all elected to serve the state. The idea that contestants for various national
positions – who are themselves taxpayers – ought to subsidize Sierra Leonean taxpayers’ contributions to the elections budget is faulty. Here’s a question that Thorpe and those who were supporting the retention of the astronomical nomination fees need to consider: why is it that applicants for very lucrative jobs in the country do not buy application forms or pay interview fees? There are so many positions that pay a lot more than what councilors, MPs, and Paramount Chiefs officially earn, but applicants for those positions are never asked to pay application or selection fees.
Part of the reason is not only because they’ll be hired to serve the state, but also because demanding application fees could inhibit so many people, who are otherwise qualified, from applying for the job. Obviously, a lot more money goes into conducting elections than a recruitment process, but it seems to me that many people have ignorantly or selfishly argued that because elected officials get a lot of privileges, they should spend every penny to get into those positions. Of course, the effects of such mindset are there for all to see in Sierra Leone – rampant corruption and neglect of public property.
I have often made the argument that if we could only minimize waste and fraud at all levels in the public sector, Sierra Leone would be out of the woods in 10 years. There are certainly many ways of mobilizing resources for the state and cushioning the pressure on our depleted public coffers, but unfortunately, Thorpe, I think it was a wrong step.
I have heard some people argue that politics is not a poor man’s affair. While there’s some truth in it, we must be careful to discuss it in the
context of the country’s economic status. How can politics or elections be a rich man’s affair when the vast majority of the people are so poor? Doesn’t it partly explain why with every administration since independence, the gap between the haves and the have-nots have widened?
While there are good arguments for retaining candidature fees, no well-meaning Sierra Leonean should push for such astronomical fees that bar others from participating in a democratic process simply because they are poor. If nomination fees are so high as to potentially bar many people from participating in elections, we should as well reconsider the state’s funding to democratic institutions such as PPRC, NCD, well..OGI, and others. And, if we are genuinely interested in looking after tax payers’ money, let us all focus on judiciously harnessing the country’s resources and more importantly, utilizing the proceeds well.
Christiana Thorpe has been criticized for recommending such astronomical nomination fees, and she may very well get many more criticisms in the weeks ahead. Even as the criticisms heap up, it does not absolve parliamentarians of the ruling party who rushed into approving the
fees, regardless of stout opposition from their colleagues. Well, it’s a normal political game, they say: the opposition opposes, the ruling party crushes. On the face of it, it might seem that the parliamentarians were supportive of Thorpe’s fees list, but it was more than just that. It was probably a move meant to demonstrate the huge gulf in fortunes that currently exists between the ruling party and opposition parties. Little wonder that even as the bickering was intensifying, the ruling APC went ahead to pay nominations fees in excess of Le1 billion for all its candidates across the board.
Given the history of suspicion between Christiana Thorpe and the main opposition SLPP since the 2007 elections, her insistence on maintaining the astronomical nominations, and the ruling party’s outright show of support for the fees, might have just sealed the coffin of suspicion (if there’s anything like that) between them. The opposition would like to think that she is now effectively on the back foot in terms
of showing that she is or can be an impartial arbiter. Personally, I have never doubted Thorpe’s impartiality as the head of NEC, but she has got to show a lot of desire to listen and take onboard what makes sense not only to the ruling party, but also the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans. I still believe that she can go on to conduct free, fair and transparent elections, and it would be absolutely criminal for anyone to reference the impasse over the nomination fees as a justification for any improper conduct during the electioneering process.
On the President’s decision to commit state resources to subsidize nomination fees, I think it makes sense simply because it has helped the whole country to move on. It does not depart from what the whole country had been saying: that the government must provide the funds to conduct elections. Again, Thorpe certainly needed to get it from our president. NEC’s primary responsibility is to conduct credible elections - not mobilize resources for the state. It would be wonderful if she and her colleagues were able to generate financial resources for the state as long as it would be done without necessarily disenfranchising poor Sierra Leoneans.
(c) Politico 18/09/12
