After fifteen years of three or more parties determining the life of Sierra Leoneans, the November polls have brought the country to a two-party system. With the All People’ Congress party controlling the executive arm, it also controls Parliament with 60% of the seats; while the Sierra Leone People’s Party controls 40%.
In this January edition of THE DEBATE, we are looking at the need, or not, for a Third Force in our country’s body politic. Umaru Fofana argues that there is need for a Third Force in the country’s politics. But first James Tamba Lebbie disagrees, arguing that the need neither exists nor has a Third Force ever emerged in the country.
A Third Force Not Needed
By James Tamba Lebbie
A so-called “Third Force” in the political landscape of Sierra Leone is irrelevant and a waste of resources especially for unsuspecting political activists who apparently have become disillusioned with the existing two dominant political parties. In fact, in my humble view, there has never been a “third force” in the true sense of the word in Sierra Leone’s political dispensation. Instead, what has existed is a group of hungry power grabbers masquerading as a “third force”.
Meanwhile, a look at the etymology and meaning of the concept itself could help you comprehend my assertion and position. The expression ‘third force” probably has its origins from the terms “third way” or “third position” which according to Bobbio, Cameron & Lewis, refers to various political positions which try to reconcile conservatives on the one hand and progressives on the other by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. “Third Way” was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to the ramifications of the collapse of international belief in the economic viability of the state economic interventionist policies and the corresponding rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right.
In France, the “third force” (Troisième Force) was a coalition during the Fourth Republic (1947-1958), which brought together the French section of the Workers’ International party, the Democratic and Socialists Union of resistance centre-right party, the Radicals, the Christian democrats Popular Republican Movement and other centrist politicians opposed both to the French Communist Party and the Gaulist movement. The ‘third force’ which governed France between 1947 and 1951 was also supported by the conservative National Centre of Independence and Peasants. The ‘third force’ coalition in France disintegrated in 1951.
In Northern Ireland, the “Third Force” was the name given to a number of attempts by the then leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Ian Paisley to create a ‘defensive militia’, which by 1981 had some 20,000 members. The DUP leader established the group ostensibly as a complement to the security forces although it bore many of the characteristics of the earlier Ulster Protestant Volunteers. Eventually, the ‘third force’ grew from opposition to the increasing pace of co-operation between the governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The group disappeared with the emergence of the Ulster Resistance.
In South Africa, it is believed that "Third Force" was a term used by leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) during the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unknown group believed to be responsible for a surge in violence in KwaZulu-Natal and townships in the area as well as those in the south of Witwatersrand. The South African TRC revealed that “while little evidence exists of a centrally directed, coherent or formally constituted ‘Third Force’, a network of security and ex-security force operatives, frequently acting in conjunction with right-wing elements and/or sectors of the IFP, was involved in actions that could be construed as fomenting violence and which resulted in gross human rights violations, including random and target killings”.
According to Ellis, those who paid attention to South African politics in the post-apartheid era first heard of ‘third force’ in September 1990 when the phrase was first used in public by leaders of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, who had already been established as the de facto leader just seven months out of prison. Ellis maintains that the ‘third force’ was integrated into the policy of the National Party over a long period in South Africa, and played a crucial role in determining the nature and outcome of constitutional negotiations in 1990-1994. My point in bringing out few of these historical references is to underscore the point that the concept of a ‘third force’ has historically sprang up out of a solid ideological foundation.
This is not the case in Sierra Leone. Far from it! The closest the concept of a ‘third force’ had come to exist in Sierra Leone (although the term was never used) could be traced far back to the 1996 presidential and parliamentary elections when Thaimu Bangura emerged as the king-maker in the run-off. The presidential contest was clearly between Alhaji Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party and Dr. John Karefa-Smart of the United National Peoples’ Party.
Bangura, apparently bitter against Karefa-Smart because he felt the latter had robbed him of victory by splitting the northern votes, sided with Kabbah and by extension enhanced his victory even if his reason for siding with Kabbah was plausible - to bridge the regional divide and to reduce ethnic tension. And whether or not he succeeded in his mission of bridging the regional divide is everybody’s guess. Meanwhile as compensation, Thaimu Bangura and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were given a number of cabinet positions including the much coveted Ministry of Finance, which Bangura himself occupied. However, in a cabinet reshuffle that followed his appointment, President Kabbah relocated Bangura to the Ministry of Works, a move many believed then was meant to demoralize and subsequently dump him out of his government altogether. Thaimu Bangura died a very disappointed man.
Fast forward to the 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary elections; it was Charles Francis Margai and cohorts that popularized the concept of a ‘third force’ by forming and launching the Peoples Movement of Democratic Change (PMDC). Suffice it to point out that the formation of the PMDC came against the backdrop of Margai’s failed attempt to win the position of flag bearer of the SLPP in the Makeni Convention before the 2007 elections. He returned to Freetown battered, bruised, bitter and beleaguered and thus, the thought of revenge against the SLPP. The formation of the PMDC therefore was not built on any ideological foundation as he made many of his supporters to believe; rather it was clearly a move to deprive the SLPP of political power, which he ultimately succeeded in doing. But like Thaimu Bangura in 1996, Charles Margai’s public reason for siding with Ernest Koroma was to minimize the regional and ethnic divide that had characterized Sierra Leone’s multi-party politics.
And in doing so, he did not only pitch tent with APC’s Ernest Koroma but also bet his political future on a promise of the latter’s performance. However, a couple of years later he had to refer to his former ally as the most “tribalistic” president in the country’s recent history and apologized to his party faithful for misleading them. So both Thaimu Bangura and Charles Margai were ill motivated by revenge against the political parties that in their judgment deprived them of attaining power, which probably explains why their parties lacked democratic structures and which existence revolved around their personalities.
Against this background, my thesis is that there has never been a third force, and it is not relevant in today’s political dispensation in Sierra Leone because those so-called ‘third force’ political parties have no ideological foundation like the existing two dominant political parties in the country. And even when the formation of a ‘third force’ is geared towards creating a political alternative for disillusioned citizens, chances are the dominant political parties will compromise and corrupt them by an offering of enticing political stakes.
A Third Force definitely Needed
By Umaru Fofama
For the first time since democracy was reintroduced in Sierra Leone in 1996, our current parliament has only two political parties represented after all others fell on the way side. No independents either. It definitely points to the dominance of our political system by the All People’s Congress and the Sierra Leone People’s Party - the two oldest parties and the only ones that have ruled Sierra Leone since independence in 1961. This, discounting the military interregnums of 1967 – 1968 (a pro-SLPP coup to deny the newly popularly elected APC government from being formed), 1992 – 1996 (the apparent pro-SLPP coup to end the then much despised APC regime), and 1997 – 1998 a pro-APC overthrow of the less than 15-month-old elected SLPP government.
To my mind the APC and the SLPP are two political parties whose real, even if unexpressed, ideologies are separated largely by ethnicity. For one to survive, they have to try to consolidate their hold on their strongholds and pray that there is some haemorrhaging on the other side. And those whose region is more educated to think outside the box of ethnicity seem to stand to lose. Now or later. And such an arrangement serves the interest of only selfish politicians whose real intent is to self-aggrandise while the masses either languish or are treated as cows – just give them salt and they are fine. This country therefore needs a Third Force to detribalise it and make it progressive.
To a large extent the issue of strongholds is not peculiar to Sierra Leone. It is predictable, for example, which way certain States in the USA will vote. But there are many swing states where voters are driven by issues and track record. This happens in some of the strongholds. Otherwise how come Ronald Reagan was able to win in all but one State during his second term bid? Understandably, the only State he lost, Minnesota, was the home of his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale. Otherwise how come Arnold Schwarzenegger won the gubernatorial election as a Republican candidate in California, a state of liberals and who support the Democratic party. Issues. Convincing. Recent track record.
The last six years, especially, have proved the high unlikelihood of common sense and people-centred voting happening in Sierra Leone where both APC and SLPP have dug in their trenches recruiting purposeless and spineless politicians whose bête-noire is to be in power and milk from the people, no matter who wins. In all of this the masses lose. This is the compelling reason for my argument that a Third Force is needed or we stand the risk of breeding a Fifth Column.
There have been attempts at creating a Third Force in Sierra Leone. Dr John Karefa-Smart came very close in 1996. He singlehandedly almost won the presidential race when he forced the SLPP to a runoff and left questions as to who really did win that race. If the medical and former WHO executive had been interested in the self he would have accepted the offer from the SLPP to lead them. The APC also courted him but perhaps the more politically prudent at the time was to accept the SLPP offer. The APC was recovering from a popular overthrow just four years earlier. And coming from the northwest, Karefa-Smart would have found it easier to win with a party entrenched in the southeast for the northwest was a given. But he stood his ground, as he told students at Fourah Bay College at the time, to end the dominance of the APC and SLPP of the country’s politics. Clearly he had an axe to grind with the SLPP for denying him the prime ministership after the death of the country’s first Prime Minister, Sir Milton Margai. In any case that did not take away the fact that he created a very powerful and massive Third Force.
Karefa-Smart’s undoing was that he failed to institutionalise his United National People’s Party (UNPP) which always revolved around his personality. The party started imploding when he quarrelled with 12 of his party’s 14 MPs and called for their expulsion from the House after he had questionably expelled them from the party. With his base in the northwest, a death knell on the UNPP meant the a bundle of joy for the APC.
There was another attempt at creating a Third Force in 2006, and I agree that it was largely a group of disgruntled elements from another party who felt hard done by the fact that they did not get chosen or elected to lead the party – the SLPP. Charles Margai and his huge number of supporters who were not necessarily delegates to the convention at which he failed to get the SLPP ticket, splintered and formed the People’s Movement for Democratic Change. Like with almost all political parties, someone had to provide the driving force behind this and that was Charles.
But Margai personalised the PMDC. He saw leadership of the country as his birth right and almost always spoke about what his dad, whose ascension to the country’s leadership was questionable, had done for Sierra Leone. Reason, he said, why he should be voted for.
Perhaps the most genuine of all attempts at creating a Third Force was that mounted by Thaimu Bangura. He was an APC parliamentarian who challenged some of the policies of his own party in parliament. He challenged the one-party hegemony from inside without siding or seeking the support of the then banned and disbanded SLPP party. His People’s Democratic Party (PDP-Sorbeh) would definitely have won the pending elections if there had not been the military coup of 1992 and if the APC government of Joseph Saidu Momoh had held clean elections. Again his party died with him.
With almost all political parties there has to be a towering figure to make it happen. That figure was Dr John Karefa-Smart. That figure was Thaimu Bangura. That figure was Charles F. Margai. The fact that it has been tried at least twice and has could mean that the leaders were not purposeful beyond their leadership ambitions. But more important, for now at least, it is far even more difficult to attain that. The main reason being that tribalism is more entrenched now than at any time before. Unless there is an implosion within the main parties bringing about another PMDC effect.
Barring that implosion and the necessity of a Third Force in the interest of all, there has to be a real change in the country’s electoral system. A quasi-presidential system (beyond a neo-presidential one) – probably modelled on the French system or a blend of the American and the British – can provide a starting point. This will allow for coalition government in which case a third or even fourth or fifth party can be needed to provide governance.
A well thought-out Proportional Representation can also make the difference. Either way it will ensure that the APC will need more than just galvanising all Temnes and Lokos and Limbas in or from the north to win, or SLPP doing same with Mendes and Kissis from the southeast, to win. That makes other sections of society feel ostracised and frustrated. The consequences of that can only best be imagined.
(C) Politico 10/01/13
