By Isaac Massaquoi
Like with everything else, people get fed up doing the same things all the time. They look for other challenges and try to meet different people, try out other ideas and get involved in projects to bring other perspectives to an issue. So it is with politics.
Let’s not hide it, we have reached a stage in the political development of this country where people will soon start asking, and loudly enough, whether the political system we have operated since independence and the parties that have dominated politics in all those years are not responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves today. We are a poor country, with poor infrastructure and very bad life expectancy. We have made gains in a few areas but, putting all other considerations to one side, the truth is, life is difficult in Sierra Leone.
People are asking whether this isn’t the time to introduce other perspectives, meet other interesting and fresh people with new ideas and zeal in a completely different political system, democratically carved out by the people of this country. That could be the legacy that Koroma should aspire to leave with Sierra Leone as he retires at the end of 2017. Not Wilkinson Road, the Hill Side By-pass road or even Bumbuna. Good though they may be.
I told some friends the other day over drinks that we could have an Executive President and a Prime Minster much like France in a system of government based on a well-defined proportional representation system. Some of them didn’t like me talking about proportional representation. They referred to the one we operated under Kabbah as evidence that politicians will be more loyal to their parties than the people and the parties will field the wrong people.
I agreed with them and suggested that there were many forms of proportional representation and we only needed to study them properly before evolving our own.
I suggested further that under my proposed system minority and interest groups would be represented in parliament and the scrutiny of government will be enhanced in true Westminster fashion. Ministers would have to answer to parliament, more directly, for all policies and other major announcements they make. In the system I am talking about ministerial initiatives will not be announced to the media at Youyi Building and routine things like parliamentary questions will not take forever to process.
The current system, in which only the two most-resourced parties in parliament, excludes all other parties and interests and the single member constituency system is bad.
One of those in the groups said the coalitions that will emerge from my proposed system will be too weak and we may hold elections every two years, using Israel as example. He said that would be too expensive for poor Sierra Leone. I told him his argument was a clever one but that operating a democracy is expensive business the alternative to which could be the North Korean system of government.
On weak coalitions and many elections, I suggested we could build safeguards into the structure to prevent that. In any case, it’s up to Ernest Koroma to start a nationwide debate now, if he thinks this makes sense at all.
In his speech to parliament, he hinted at a constitutional review process. I hope all issues will be on the table.
What I have addressed in the preceding paragraphs I have also discussed in past editions of Politico. But it’s this Third Force question that has got me going again.
I believe the so-called Third Force will naturally emerge if a genuine political space is created because none of the examples that Fofana and Lebbie discussed in our last debate were my own true conceptions of a Third Force.
But as Fofana argued, it was Thaimu Bangura, who, as a backbench MP began the struggle against APC dominance of politics from within so that when the opportunity for a run-off in the inconclusive 1996 election appeared, he took it in his stride and wrote his name into the history books of Sierra Leone forever.
The days following the first round vote were tense but exciting, never mind Foday Sankoh’s rebellion. The notorious rumour mill in Freetown was in overdrive as it became clear that whichever candidate Thaimu Bangura supported would win the election. So when we received a call at the then SLBS, where I worked at the time, from a man called Jordan Kanu with the message that Bangura wanted to make a statement on national TV, we quickly put the nation on alert. By the way Jordan Kanu is that middle-aged man who usually nibbles around State House and isin APC gatherings in an unmistakably red necktie.
Four of us from the national broadcaster arrived at Bangura’s Babadorie residence where a small crowd of between 50 and 70 members and supporters of his PDP Sorbeh were milling around looking very pleased with their new Kingmaker status.
It took another thirty minutes for Jordan Kanu to emerge from the building on being told of our arrival to interview his boss, and another one hour for him to push his way through several other PDP supporters to tell us that his boss would see us in a few minutes. I was getting tired with all the choreography.
The whole interview lasted just over twenty-five minutes. Bangura’s “main reason” for supporting Kabbah over Kerefa Smart was that he wanted to fight “tribalism and regionalism” in Sierra Leone politics and so “heal the nation”. He said he would take Kabbah to the SLPP’s political ground zero in the north and turn the votes over to him.
Once the camera was turned off, Bangura expressed extremely strong views about a man called Alimamy Sillah who was Electoral Commissioner for the northern region. He was convinced Sillah rigged the election in his region in favour of Smart. He said he couldn’t believe that the PDP came second behind Kerefa Smart’s UNPP in the northern headquarter town of Makeni of all places.
The alliance between the SLPP and the PDP in government was strong. PDP had some of the most active and vocal MPs, they were the darlings of the media – it’s just natural that journalists would give disproportionate attention to the best speakers because they make good headlines.
Feeling confident in government owing to a combination of wooing PDP members to their side and bullying others into cooperating with them at all times, the SLPP began making optimistic noises about being an impregnable fortress that could win without the PDP.
Bangura was then transferred from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Works. His last official function that I covered was a very eventful one. Many journalists left the press conference at Miatta Conference hall convinced the end was nigh for the fire brand politician – a combination of natural and psychological pressures had taken a toll on him.
In the weeks leading to that news conference, sections of the media had launched an attack on him for signing lucrative contracts with local contractors who could either only produce sub-standard jobs or had swindled the money without Bangura doing anything about it. At least one PDP politician at the time, who is now an integral part of the ruling APC suggested to a group of journalists including me, that Kabbah himself or some of his ministers were behind the vicious media campaign against Bangura. I cannot now recall if the government ever issued a statement defending the works minister.
Halfway through his lengthy speech he began drinking a lot of water and sweating profusely. At one point his deputy, a lady called Sia Ngougou stood up and fanned his boss. Miatta conference hall was hot but the word in the hall that evening was cold – thatthe man was really sick. He died not long after that and his party – the great third force that came on stream with a lot of promise also died with him. Bangura was so much a powerful force in Sierra Leone politics that at the recent elections, the remnant of the PDP used his picture on their main campaign poster – typical North Korea style.
The other so-called third force led by Kerefa Smart collapsed in spectacular fashion.
The team he put together was made up of all sorts of people – hungry lions looking for a quick political kill, failed technocrats, genuine political upstarts and “Watermelon” opportunists, all hanging on the force of the old man’s personality to gain political nirvana.
Smart had been away too long and didn’t know the people he had around him, coupled with his abiding belief in his political infallibility. All this would conspire to reduce his party from the high of 1996 to a situation in which by 2012, they could not even make 1% of the vote.
Charles Margai and his party have some similarity with the PDP. The difference is that Margai didn’t take any position in government.
Margai came out of the SLPP for the second time after reversing an earlier decision to quit his father’s party that was clearly refusing to reform from within and end the old boys’ club’s stranglehold on leadership in the SLPP. He thus became the ready-made leader of a growing number of extreme leftists in the SLPP who, by the time of the delegates’conference in Makeni in 2005,were prepared to do the unthinkable – quit the SLPP and challenge them in their own heartland. The party’s leaders and rank and file dismissed him as a Mr Nobody. He would be the catalyst for a chain of events that would bring down the SLPP and wake them up from their arrogance and complacency.
The highly manipulated and flawed Makeni conference and the fact the SLPP committed a blunder of incalculable magnitude by putting Margai on trial in Bo of all places over and that CKC incident which Berewa considered disrespectful, pushed things over the edge and the PMDC was born.
The story of what has happened to the PMDC in recent times is fresh and well known. No matter what Margai says on radio, his party has been severely wounded and they will need much more than cosmetic surgery, shrewd political thinking and lots of luck to be able to get one MP, talk not of taking State House.
So to repeat myself – let’s change the political system and make it genuinely open, then many political interests will emerge and we will have a parliament much more representative of the country and its rich and diverse socio-ethnic make-up. Trying to squeeze every human being seeking to enter politics down the hole leading to one of the two main parties is just impossible; the system will be choked up at some point. This ruthless elimination of all opponents, perceived orreal, will be drastically reduced.
