Why We Need Change: The case for a developmental, inclusive and democratic party
APC, SLPP or NGC?
Which of Sierra Leone’s parties is likely to advance the development agenda? The presidential election is likely to be a threeway race: Samura Kamara and the APC, Julius Maada Bio and the SLPP, and Kandeh Yumkella and the newly minted National Grand Coalition (NGC). There are five big reasons why Kamara and the APC will not reboot and get back to the business of development. The first is that the party has run out of steam. It is now too mired in patronage and corruption, with the missing Ebola funds and stealing of hard earned pilgrims’ payments for the 2017 Hajj by government officials with links to State House being the most scandalous. Because of corruption, Sierra Leone failed to qualify for a grant that may have been in hundreds of millions of dollars from the US-sponsored Millennium Challenge Corporation in 2013. In addition, it will be difficult for the party to ditch the very bad deals it struck with mining companies, estimated in 2012 to have cost the state USD224 million through overly generous concessions. The party is too embedded in the dynamics of rent-based accumulation in the mining sector to be able to commit to more demanding job-creating growth strategies.
Second, the party has regressed much further in democratic politics. Koroma is now larger than the party, having been allowed to choose the party’s standard bearer and his running mate. An undemocratic party stifles internal debate and renewal. Third, the choice of Kamara (North) and Chernoh Maju Bah (Western Area) suggests that the party has given up on the South and East, which account for about 40% of our population. Fourth, Kamara is likely to be beholden to Koroma, who did not even give him the opportunity to choose his own running mate. If Kamara wins and Koroma remains as chairman and leader, as is being hinted, Koroma will be the most powerful man in the country as he can remove the president and vice president from office by causing the party to dismiss them from the APC. Fifth, even though Kamara is a decent man, and has worked in our financial institutions for more than 30 years, he comes across largely as a bureaucrat without a passion for new ideas.
What about Bio? Since 2012, the SLPP has been riven by disputes, many of which were orchestrated by executive members who owed allegiance to Bio and frustrated credible competitors out of the party. Besides, Bio’s excess historical baggage still looms large to render him unfit for the presidency. TejanKabbah told the nation in 1997 that before Bio’s NPRC left office in 1996 ‘hundreds of billions of leones’ were paid out on dubious transactions with top NPRC officials, relations and business associates; that Bio gave his brother, Steven Bio, the authority to ‘conclude all and any military contracts anywhere in the world’, as a result of which the latter concluded contracts ‘running into tens of millions of dollars’; and a few days before he left office, Bio himself ‘caused the government to pay into his private firm, P. Banga Investment Limited the sum of Le.235,000,000..for the replacement of helicopter engines which did not belong to the Government’. Bio is also banned from entering the USA, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission implicated ‘all the leaders of NPRC’ in the extrajudicial killing of 29 citizens. In addition, Bio is widely accused of introducing a politics of thuggery or paopa in the SLPP. He has not demonstrated any firm grasp of development policy issues.
This brings me to Yumkella and the NGC. It is too early to assess the NGC on its commitment to democracy and capacity to mobilise working people. However, its discourse on ending the douopoly of the two main parties, dispensing with the tyranny of party colours, and embracing inclusive politics is a breath of fresh air. Indeed, this may well be Sierra Leone’s first party that is truly multi-ethnic after the break-up of the all-inclusive SLPP in the 1960s. The NGC’s commitment to transformative development, as expressed consistently in Kandeh’s vision in interviews and speeches, is laudable. Kandeh is very passionate about development, communicates his ideas clearly, and is well steeped in development work, having served as Director General of the UN Industrial Development Organization and the UN Secretary General’s chief advocate on energy for all. The key point here is not his status as an ex-official of the UN, an organization that is not known for breeding politicians with transformative agendas. What is remarkable is that Kandeh has absorbed the enormous knowledge and networks available in the UN system while maintaining his critical mind and passion for change. He has excelled in every endeavour he has undertaken from school to university and at the workplace. We need someone with his mind-set for excellence to end the habit of getting by with only what is ‘available’, which is often expressed as: ‘if the best is not available, the available becomes the best’. Well, the ‘available’ is often mediocrity and has not served us well. Conclusion Let me conclude. As Jimmy Kandeh has recently shown, there is nothing in our history that suggests that we can only be governed by the APC and SLPP. The APC was almost dead in 1996. No prominent Northerner wanted to associate with it because of its deplorable record between 1968 and 1992. Even Koroma was believed to be a member of the PDP. The APC secured only 5% of the votes in the 1996 elections. The party owed its revival to TejanKabbah, who, it can be argued, killed the PDP and UNPP through patronage and absorption of many of their elites into the SLPP. What our history suggests is that third parties die easily as key members are absorbed by winning parties. The challenge for the NGC is to prepare for the long haul, build intraparty democratic systems of governance, and nurture durable links with working people .