OPINION > One Thing & Another Seven Days In Office...President Koroma Has Sealed His Presidency Posted by Sheka Tarawalie on Sep 27, 2007, 21:18

A week in politics, the old cliché says, is a very long time. But the rapidity with which events have taken place in the first week of Ernest Koroma’s presidency in Sierra Leone leaves one with a sense of admiration for the 54-year-old. Of course the critics think the opposite. Just now, Koroma has been slain for making a trip abroad while there were reports of tensions and/or attacks purportedly against SLPP members and Nigerians. To the opposition, Ernest has literally started his presidency on a wrong footing. I beg to differ.

Certainly, the working week of Monday 17^th September to Saturday (remember that SLPP filed an injunction against NEC on a Saturday) 22^nd September 2007 has a lot to tell us about which direction the newly-elected APC government will take us. Already President Koroma has stirred controversy in the first major steps he has taken so far, already the critics have sharpened their swords, and already the president should be ready to face the music. It will be a long, hard game.

But, as I see it, Koroma has not erred at all - yet. If you scratch beyond the surface of haphazard interpretation of events, you would discover that Koroma could not have been wiser in doing what he has done in seven days. A jittery leader would have been afraid to leave the country. But he had done his home work well and he thought it wise to go. And away he went. So instead of the media spotlight dwelling on petty squabbles that were worth dismissing, he drew attention to himself as the new leader of Sierra Leone in the international arena. By the time Koroma came back, indeed everywhere was silent. The police chain of command had got connected, the people had regained composure, and all eyes are on Koroma again to present his nominees for Cabinet positions in parliament. Excellent job!

Now let’s wind the clocks back to Monday 17^th September. Koroma woke up that morning not knowing exactly what was going to happen. The SLPP had raised the political stakes by taking the elections matter to the Supreme Court with a view of stopping the NEC chairperson from either recounting apparently rigged votes or even announcing any further results. It couldn’t have been tenser for Koroma who had already sensed victory at least from the majority of the votes announced thus far. And, as fate would have it, even with the apparent insubordination of NEC commissioners who were rather rightly earlier suspected of favouring the ruling party, Thorpe actually went ahead to announce the results, declaring Ernest Koroma as the duly elected president of our country. On that same day, he was sworn in (and I have already earlier lauded Solomon Berewa for a display of solidarity, albeit late, for democracy by attending the ceremony).

But, definitely, we have to remember how bitterly contested the elections were, how polarised the contest had become, as it was marred with some accusations and counter accusations of attacks by one party or another. We would not forget (indeed we can forgive) how Koroma’s convoy was attacked and prevented from campaigning in certain areas in the south/east, we would not forget how earlier Tom Nyuma was the subject of an assassination attempt on the then APC presidential candidate, we would still recall that Maada Bio inferred in a radio interview the possibility of spearheading a military takeover in the event the APC won the elections. We would definitely remember how the SLPP radio even on that Monday morning was vowing that they would never allow the APC to rule Sierra Leone again, and we can’t forget that in certain places in Kailahun the poro devil was brought out, thereby returning 100% and above votes for the SLPP.

It was against this background that Koroma was declared winner and sworn-in as President. On the evening of that Monday, there were reports that the SLPP headquarters, supporters, and Nigerian businesses were attacked and looted (I’ll come back to this in a moment). What Koroma did was to go into action immediately. On Tuesday morning he was at State House. He summoned the Inspector General of Police, called the SLPP Secretary General JJ Blood, and instructed Vice President Sam Sumana to visit the SLPP headquarters both as an assurance of security and a move of reconciliation, as against any form of violence or intimidation against anyone. Koroma issued press releases giving stern warnings that anyone caught breaking the law would be dealt with accordingly.

The next day, Wednesday, Koroma took a further double-barreled commendable step by meeting with outgoing SLPP cabinet ministers and their quasi-military surrogates, Nyuma and Bio. Koroma created a friendly atmosphere for the likes of John Benjamin, who just a couple of days before was allegedly busy organizing a so-called SLPP reformed group which was attributed with the poro devil incidences in Kailahun; Koroma smiled and chatted with Bio and Nyuma who otherwise could have been at best kept under stringent security surveillance. Yet Koroma assured all of them of security and even asked the ministers to go back to work and get back all the amenities befitting their transitory positions (and this was after some had tried to make applications for visa at the British High Commission and got turned down).

On Thursday, Koroma took a practical step by visiting Kingtom Power Station to show how much priority he places on the provision of electricity for at least the city for a start.

If on Friday Koroma makes a trip to Guinea, Liberia, and Burkina Faso, I can only see it as a step in the right direction. Koroma is president of the whole of Sierra Leone, and he knows there is a chunk of our territory called Yenga which was literally ceded to the Guineans by the SLPP government. It is urgent that the Guinean authorities, who even reportedly publicly supported Berewa in the elections, know that there has actually been a change of leadership in Sierra Leone and should be prepared to respect the security cum territorial integrity of our country. Liberia cannot be accused of doing anything untoward per se, but it was from there that Ambassador Patrick Foya loaded a pistol to enter Sierra Leone and fire at opposition supporters. President Koroma needs to send a message to all Sierra Leoneans living in Liberia that things will not be the same from now on and that our joint border would be robustly patrolled by our security forces. This is Mano River Union business; and any president worth his salt would make it a priority as Koroma has done. And for him to put the icing on the cake by visiting the Chairman of ECOWAS, Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso, can only be condemned by cynics.

With that visit, Koroma actually sealed his presidency – what we normally called a consolidation of power, sending a powerful message to all within Sierra Leone and beyond that indeed there is a new leader who cared for the well-being of all his countrymen and women.

And talking about women, I won’t dare leave out as part of my admiration of Koroma’s first week in office the humble role played on Thursday by market women who took it upon themselves to clean State House for the first time in donkey years. One of the most notorious ways of the SLPP in trying to show that they were a government doing something was the twin project of Operation Free Flow and implementation of the Town and Country Planning Act (which eventually gained the nickname of ‘broke ose’). In a lop-sided attempt to clear the city and major towns of street traders and so-called illegal structures, market women who are predominantly their families’ breadwinners as a result of massive male unemployment, were the butt of police brutality and arrests. While not providing any viable alternatives, the former government hounded these hapless survivors. Even when the government tried to imitate NGOs like Campaign for Good Governance and the UK’s Department for International Co-operation in giving out micro-credit facilities, the SLPP ensured that they steered clear of the poor and instead chose traditional elders/ paramount chiefs as beneficiaries clearly for electioneering purposes.

No wonder paramount chiefs became the targets of post-elections malice. Now, I will never justify any violence or unlawful behaviour, but I can rationalize or trace the history of the recent violence; and I can only put it on the feet of the SLPP. Apart from the general attempt by the SLPP to get the chiefs to endorse Berewa as their candidate (totally against the tradition and spirit of the Constitution which rule out politicization of the culture of chieftaincy), we can take the case of Biriwa chiefdom as an example of how the SLPP sowed the seeds of discord that erupted into violence recently. Before you misinterpret me, I have already condemned any act of violence against anybody in Sierra Leone (be they SLPP supporters or not) in a live radio interview conducted by David Tam-Baryoh on his Citizen FM; but as a political commentator, there is the need to put events in perspective.

It was in Biriwa chiefdom that the SLPP went out of its way to flagrantly impose a Madingo chief in a Limba heartland. This has nothing to do with tribalism, it is all about tradition – and I will not imagine anyone dreaming of imposing a Koranko chief in a Sherbro stronghold for instance. Even at the general protests of the Biriwa inhabitants, even against warnings from certain sections of the press, even against the advice of NEC chairperson Christiana Thorpe who should constitutionally have conducted the elections, the out-gone SLPP government went ahead to make Issa Sheriff the sole candidate and eventually winner of a farce election. For outgoing Local Government Minister Sidiki Brima to have brought the Provincial Secretary South to conduct elections in the North was in itself a cheeky and risky adventure. And even when the case was taken to the Supreme Court by the Biriwa natives, out-gone President Kabbah influenced the outcome by publicly endorsing Sheriff while addressing police officers at a workshop conducted by the United Nations Development Programme in Kingtom. I told Berewa to beware of Biriwa. Now this is the result.

And then to the Nigerians. One would definitely wonder why of all the various foreign nationals in Sierra Leone it was only the Nigerians that were targeted. It can hardly be surprising to a political pundit. Apart from the long-gone laying of lives by Nigerian soldiers in order to shore up the SLPP in power, and apart from the very obvious reports of Nigerian collusion with rebels and engagement in mining activities which apparently cost our country so much in terms of human suffering, out-gone President Obasanjo’s public declaration of support for Solomon Berewa’s candidacy during a pre-election visit to Freetown and the general apparent meddling of some Nigerians in local politics had not helped innocent Nigerians who might have only been in Sierra Leone for purely commercial purposes. Nigerians playing the big brother card have not impressed us at all: after all, there is nothing to learn about democracy and fair elections from Nigeria.

But, even at that, I would only appeal to all our compatriots not to take the law into their hands, not to attack anybody, be they Nigerians or former government functionaries who tried to pitch chiefs against their subjects. We should be consoled by the fact that we’ve got a new regime, which, within a week, has proven worth looking up to. After all, President Koroma went to Burkina Faso on Friday, and by the time he came back on Saturday all the tensions had died down. How else can one consolidate power! God bless!