S/Leone Presidential Run-off: A Dilemma for the National Grand Coalition (II)
Continued from last week… olitics is essentially about interests, values and power. The first issue that should guide the NGC in its deliberation is how to ensure that its three core interests, which I assume are based on values of solidarity or a compact with common people, permeate the public sphere, become public policy and change people’s lives for the better. The second is about power-i.e. whether the NGC as it is currently constituted and based on its performance in the first round of elections can compel any of the two parties to honour run-off deals that will advance its core interests when they win elections.
I want to advance three arguments why an NGC endorsement of any party is not likely to serve the NGC well. The first relates to interests and power. Our presidential system of government makes it difficult to construct coalition governments that serve the interests of minor parties, especially when the government has an absolute majority in parliament. Coalition governments work well in Western democracies because they are mostly based on parliamentary systems where minor parties in a coalition can end the lives of governments that betray coalition deals. In our presidential system, endorsements or run-off deals are a blank cheque, which the winning party can cash without any control from the giver or minor party.
Kabbah’s SLPP entered into an alliance with the People’s Democratic Party in the 1996 run-off election and offered the latter a few cabinet and ambassadorial posts. However, within a few years, most of the PDP members had either been absorbed by the SLPP or lost their cabinet positions. Today, the PDP could not even put up a candidate in the elections, and has a comedian, Salone Trump, as leader. Similarly, Charles Margai’s People’s Movement for Democratic Change entered into a run-off alliance with Koromas’ APC in 2007 and also received a few government appointments. The PMDC suffered PDP’s fate of losing the government jobs and some of its top members to the APC within a very short time. Today, the party cannot even get half a percentage point in the presidential election. The Revolutionary United Front Party, the offspring of the Revolutionary United Front, which brutalised Sierra Leoneans in the 1990s civil war, commands more votes than the PMDC both nationally and in the South-East.
The president has a popular mandate, which can only be overturned by parliamentary impeachment for gross crimes. Once elected, he/she cannot be held in check or removed from
Poffice by any party in a runoff deal. A minority party in a coalition can make life difficult for the president in parliament by refusing to support the president’s bills, but this can only happen if there is a hung parliament, forcing the president to work constructively with small parties. We do not have the results of the parliamentary elections, but unofficial sources suggest that the APC is likely to have a majority in parliament. This indicates that the NGC will not have the power to compel a government it has endorsed in a run-off to honour a deal.
The second argument against endorsement is the threat posed by both parties to the survival of the NGC in an ethnically bifurcated electorate. If any of the parties wins, the NGC will face tremendous pressure for survival in the ethnic region of the winning party, which will command state resources to woo NGC supporters or disorganise the party in specific localities. This is a problem the NGC has to contend with whether it endorses a winner or not. However, if the APC loses, there is a high probability that it will be weakened, and its long awaited implosion will occur, offering opportunities to the NGC to make further in-roads in the North. Similarly, if the SLPP loses, it will drive home the point that the party cannot win elections by playing the ethnic card, which does not favour the party because of the lopsided nature of the electorate in ethno-regional terms. This might encourage South-East voters and the SLPP to be more flexible in trying out new arrangements, which the NGC will be able to exploit in order to grow in those regions. These scenarios suggest that the NGC should not entangle itself in the slippery politics of endorsement. It should leave the decision to its voters, who in any case may not necessarily follow the party’s endorsement.
There is a third problem that the NGC needs to consider. Sierra Leone’s party system is not policy-based or ideological. This means that parties may overestimate their power of endorsement, which may not necessarily be accepted by the membership, unless in situations where the party’s endorsement reflects the preferences of the voters.
The NGC has the largest number of votes in Kambia, Yumkella’s home base. Many of those votes may have been ethnic, but they are only 27% of the NGC’s national votes. The Kambia voters do not like the way the APC has treated Yumkella, their ‘son’. If he endorses the SLPP, perhaps many might follow his decision to vote SLPP because these voters dislike the APC’s anti-Yumkella stance. Voterleader interests may be aligned in such a scenario. However, the danger for the NGC is that if most NGC Kambia voters support the endorsement, but other NGC voters in other regions do not, the NGC may risk becoming an ethnic party-something that is alien to its DNA. Furthermore, if the NGC endorses the SLPP and an SLPP government becomes ethnically discriminatory like the APC’s, there could be a backlash against the NGC in the North-a fate suffered by the PMDC in the South after its endorsement of Koroma’s APC in 2007. This suggests that the best strategy for the NGC is to leave the choice to its diverse voters who may not speak with one voice.
Non-endorsement of parties in the run-off does not mean the NGC will be side-lined. Indeed, it has its work cut out if it seriously believes in the kind of change that it propagates. Perhaps, expectations were too high that Sierra Leone’s ethnoregional divide will be broken in one election cycle by a party that is barely five months old. The NGC’s message of change is now in the public domain and more than 170,000 voters embraced it. It seems to have won a few parliamentary seats and local councils. Parliament offers the party a platform to actively promote its change message. And if it ends up controlling or having representation in a few councils, it may have the opportunity to implement its new kind of politics at the local level and ensure that service delivery benefits the poor. This might help to debunk the allegation that the NGC is all talk and no action.
Conclusion
Finally, the run-off election may depressingly turn out to be the mother of all ethnic battles in Sierra Leone. The only way the APC can win is to aggressively push the ethnic card because of the advantage it enjoys in the ethno-regional distribution of registered voters. This is why many of its supporters seem to have gone nuclear on WhatsApp in telling voters that an SLPP victory will be a nightmare for Northerners. Similarly, the only way the SLPP can win is to tell its South-East voters to remain solidly loyal on ethnic grounds and to urge Northern voters to eschew ethnicity. WhatsApp propaganda messages from SLPP supporters largely focus on the North, with stories of APC atrocities against smaller ethnic groups or SLPP supporters. There are no saints in this game of ethnic politics. Yumkella stated in his post-election address that ‘whatever the position of the NGC, the party will be in the runoff’. The most honourable and civic role NGC can play in the run-off is to denounce the ethnic scaremongering tactics of both parties, and lead the rising public demand for the down-grading, if not elimination, of ethnicity in our politics. This, after all, is one of the core interests of the NGC.
Mr. Bangura wrote this piece from Nyon, Switzerland. He could be reached at Bangura.ym@ gmail.com