By Oumar Farouk Sesay
A vexed mentality permeates our social media postings, painting the portrait of a frustrated people bereft of hope. A content analysis of some of the material of the binary debate in the media could be valuable to a psychanalyst who would want to probe the range and depth of the national mindset. In some cases the fora give one the impression of a vast mental home in which everyone seems to be filling a perforated drum as proof of sanity – or not.
The few minds operating outside the pandemic of vexed mentality mindset have been shoved and pushed to the fringes of the binary debate where they watch from a safe distance as a nation is about to play with fire again.
Like children, we played with the flame of a candle once and got burnt, yet we are still poised to touch many fires, thinking it is only the flame from a candle that burns. The bickering within us speaks of a people sleepwalking to a future that looks like their past with widely open eyes and firmly shut minds.
Our country has a political history steeped deep in gore and grudge to last us all for a lifetime of retaliation. So, we embark on vengeance even though we stagnate or retrogress as consequences of our choices. Sadly, the recurring theme of revenge in our action and discourse perpetuates the unpleasantness of the original offence and creates a vicious circle of retaliation. It seems the anger within us is insatiable; hence for fifty-nine years of flag independence, the two major political parties are not done settling scores. The quest in us for blood-for-blood and an eye-for-an-eye has flawed the national character. The nation seems marked for a tragedy the like of which could make the eleven-year war sound like a prologue If we continue to poke God.
As the orgy of revenge occupies center stage, the opposition waits in the fringe for their turn to perform a re-run of the same script with different costumes. This politics of hate has become the perennial status quo of a nation that was once the jewel of West Africa. Sometimes the fire of revenge burns under control. At other times it just goes wild and scorches everything in its path. At times it seems the two camps have reached a detente of some sort then boom it escalates to mad as in the mutually assured destruction.
In either side of the divide there are historians of grudge and grievances armed with archive and pictorial evidence to justify acts of revenge and wounds inflicted on each other. In both sides of the divide, we have moral equivalency argument sharpened to justify actions of revenge with the canned logic that says: “they did that to us the last time”.
There are extremists in both sides of the divide behaving like Rottweiler to ensure the perpetuation of the conflict. Politically-contrived hate, among a people with so many common bonds, is at the verge of plunging the nation to doom again. The windfall in the form of job and social capital that is convertible to corporate capital is vast hence the battle cries of Aluta Continua in the direction of revenge grew louder any time there is a change of government. It seems there is a battle for the soul of each party involving protagonists from the left, the right and an in-between going for at each other's throat.
Arguably, the far right of the ruling party is in governance hence the brimstone that has left the opposition in disarray, the nation in enhanced anxiety and a tense business climate.
The regional and ethnic texture of the parties creates a climate in which far-right ideas feed their kind in the opposition, hence creating a tense atmosphere. The extremists in the opposition are baying for blood even when the election is years away.
It is not hard to predict that power would change hands someday and it would likely be the opposite of PAOPA in the opposition that would prevail over the moderates, therefore, guaranteeing a future like our past and present.
What was the original offence that has hurled a nation with so much potential into a dangerous circle of hate and revenge politics? Who was it that threw the first stone, and how can we redress this first mortal sin and save the fate of a nation? Your guess is as good as mine.
The toxicity in the bipartisan politics of the country has claimed many lives, and it still has the potential to claim more lives if cooler heads fail to prevail.
From the 1798 revolt which saw the execution of Isaac Anderson and Francis Patrick in what legal luminaries described as the first coup, there have been many politically motivated trials and executions. Many have died in the gallows of Pademba Road prison in the name of coups. Many Sierra Leoneans have gone through the gauntlet of a justice system rigged against them from the moment of arrest to execution. Many have been executed extrajudicially in the name of politics.
Thankfully, from Tejan Kabbah’s second term to Ernst Koroma’s two terms, we have not seen mock trials and executions like those in the previous regimes. Hopefully, they will not happen in this regime if only we allow the better angels of our nature to prevail.
In the past the state had a near-monopoly in the field of news dissemination, the few media houses competing did not have the reach of the national broadcaster. News took a top to bottom path from the leaders to the led. The mobile phones and other technologies have succeeded in compromising the state’s monopoly in the field of information dissemination; hence dilettantes in the field living in far-flung places can spew inanities to threaten the decorum of the country. Somehow the state with all the resources at her disposal is yet to develop a strategic policy response to regulate the so-called, good day Sierra Leonean media that tends to drown the national voice in a babel of obscenities. The ensuing frustration translates to the use of tactics that harken to a less glorious past and to the use of procedure and process that erodes institutional confidence. The seed of our future demise is in the erosion of institutional trust if we fail to remedy the daily withering of trust.
Jonathan Sumption in the 2019 Reith Lecture argues that we obey the state for two reasons: one is of fear of punishment and the second reason is the state’s legitimacy earned in our case through a legal rationale means.
He further argues that legitimacy is less than law but more than opinion. It is based on the collective instinct that we owe it to each other to obey our institutions. It is premised on a collective identity that says we are in it together. It feeds on the tacit consent of the people. Arguably, without the tacit approval of the people, the survival of the state will be threatened as it happens in East European regimes. It feeds on the acceptability of the decision-making process of all organs of governance.
The majority rule gained through the electoral process is enough to authorize but not enough to legitimize; hence the tacit approval of everyone is required through a process of negotiation, soft power, and coercion. In a country such as ours with a fragile electoral majority in a winner-takes-all context enhanced statecraft skills are needed to govern.
The way the legal process is being perceived tends to negate the notion that we are in it together. The perception of the opposition is that the party in power controls all institutions – from the courts to the prison. All personnel from the Secretary to the President to the sanitary officer belong to the government. Very little has been done over the years to debunk the perception of the state as a loaded gun in the hands of the government pointed at the opposition in and if-you-move-I-shoot quandary, or you-shake-ar-warp logic.
Suffice it to say that fear as a political tool works. Still, it has a shelf life and requires a sense of proportion, otherwise anxiety would checkmate fear like in the national parable: A fearful devil must not stay throughout the night, it would tempt children to take a peep.
Our path to nationhood is strewn with thorn prone crossroads. The conundrum we are in seems to suggest that we are yet to follow the right track.
The onus to travel the path of unity is on all of us, but our leaders in all their varying forms and capacity bear the enormous responsibility to make the right choice for us. The leaders are many, but the buck stops with the President.
Fortunately, our President, Julius Mada Bio, has a Churchillian advantage of having served both in war and peace times. So, there is nothing any adviser could tell him that he has not yet experienced for himself. We would therefore not use the ancient monarchial excuse that the king has no-fault, to excuse any failure of the leadership – the buck stops with the President.
This period of our history marks President Maada Bio's second coming as President, and as a people of faith we anchor our hopes on the resurrection promised in our quest to be a nation of many people but one destiny.
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