Tejan Kabbah's hand-picked successor losing

Vice President Solomon Berewa

It is a double-whammy lesson in how not to impose an unpopular candidate and how not to stoke ethnocentric or religious sentiments in elections. The ruling party in Sierra Leone is on the brink of losing the presidency as Ahmed Tejan Kabbah's two terms draw to a close.

Amid widespread frustration at corruption and unemployment, his hand-picked successor, Vice President Solomon Berewa could only manage 38 percent against Ernest Bai Koroma's 44.3 percent in the August 11 presidential vote.

In an article in today’s edition, a Sierra Leonean makes the point: "Solomon Berewa and [his running mate] Momodu Koroma were Kabbah’s handpicked patronage choices and a party that can be so anti-democratic in its internal operations cannot be expected to serve as custodian of our teething democracy.”

The author warns, “You can scheme and buy your way to the leadership of the SLPP but you surely cannot buy the presidency of Sierra Leone. That is one of the many lessons of the 2007 elections - the SLPP is not Sierra Leone and our country does not belong to its leaders.” 

Moreover, the irresponsible electioneering tactics of the contestants have resulted in splitting the war-scarred country on ethnic and regional lines, stoking fears of mounting tension ahead of a presidential run-off.

With none of the presidential contenders gaining the 55 percent required to win the first round outright, the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party goes into this Saturday’s run-off with its fate of defeat almost sealed by an unlikely kingmaker, who is credited with splitting the party’s front. 

SLPP dissident Charles Margai of the People’s Movement for Democratic Change, who came third in the August 11 first round, is now backing Koroma, 54.

Like Prof Mills of Ghana’s NDC, Koroma was elected Presidential Candidate for the 2002 presidential elections and leader of the APC in March 2002 and again at the September 2005 APC Convention for the 2007 presidential elections.

He is currently Minority Leader in the Sierra Leone House of Parliament.

Instructively, Margai, who boasts strong pedigree in the SLPP, was forced to form the PMDC as a split from the SLPP in 2005 when the President allegedly rigged the nomination process in favour of his Vice President. Margai was seen then as the clear favourite to lead the SLPP after Kabbah.

Ironically, the late Siaka Stevens’ All Peoples Congress, which itself ruled for two graft-tainted decades before the war and was accused of mismanaging the economy, is on the verge of returning to power on an anti-corruption platform. It won the parliamentary vote with 59 of 112 available seats.

The support of Margai’s PMDC, with 10 seats, guaranteed the anti-SLPP coalition a parliamentary majority even with the dozen regional paramount chiefs who also sit in parliament and had tended to back the SLPP as the ruling party in recent years.

With about 100,000 votes separating Koroma and Berewa in the presidential poll, the run-off would depend largely on how well Margai, who took more than 250,000 votes on August 11, could convince his southern Mende heartland to switch to the northern-based APC.

The violence which marred this year’s elections is attributed to the ethnocentric manner in which the presidential race was fought. Margai, whose uncle Milton Margai led the SLPP in the first post-independence government in 1961, is hoping to overcome regionalism to deliver his votes to the APC.

"It is evident that Sierra Leone is polarised voting-wise. That is not helping the nation to develop ... the north-southeast divide should be a thing of the past", said Margai.

Koroma’s opposition APC, strong among the northern Temne and Limba groups which together made up an estimated 39% of the population, had a clean electoral sweep across the north and the west, including the capital, Freetown.

All but two APC seats were in the west and north, and the party won only 10% of presidential votes in the South, whose Mende people made up about 30% of the nation.

Joe Alie, history professor at Freetown’s elite Fourah Bay College, said: "They have simply preached naked ethnic politics. It really does not augur well for the unity of this county, especially when you consider we have just come from a very nasty war."

Another analyst, Gbla, has this to say about the lure of ethnocentric politics: "Most of these people are poor. And because they are poor, their political decisions can be bought. Politicians say if you help your kinsmen you will survive; we will give you jobs, opportunities and education. That’s why people vote along their tribe lines."

Though the polls have revealed ethnic fault lines in the nation of more than 5 million people, voting in Sierra Leone had not always been so polarised.

In the 2002 elections, following the decade of diamond-cast civil war, the SLPP’s Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a Muslim of mixed north/south parentage, won more than 70% of the popular vote. His religion and ethnicity were not much of an issue.

But, this time politicians and the mass media somehow joined forces, either through commission or omission, to fan such divisionist sentiments.

The President has also not helped by ignoring internal party democracy and imposing his will and candidate on his party. Kabbah’s preferred candidate, Vice-President Solomon Berewa, a former Minister of Justice, was chosen as the presidential candidate of the ruling SLPP, as well as its leader, in early September 2005. Two months ago, he named Foreign Minister Momodu Koroma as SLPP’s vice-presidential candidate.

The article beside the editorial is rather instructive. "You know an incumbent party is going to lose an election when it resorts to paying youths to don its T-shirts and participate at its campaign rallies.

This is exactly what the SLPP did (something it did not have to do in 2002 or 1996) to inflate the number of people at its rallies and create the false impression of numerical strength."

He observes that what the APC and PMDC lacked in resources they made up for with the genuine commitment of party members and supporters.

"By contrast, the lavish spending of Berewa and his rapacious cohorts could not offset what the SLPP lacked in popular support."

The author further states, "The degenerate spectacle of long lines of people waiting for cash payments at Berewa’s house in the weeks leading to the elections is one of many examples of the SLPP leader’s appalling crudity and lack of political sense."

As to what lessons for Ghana’s political parties, as election '08 nears, the facts speak for themselves.

The Statesman : News : Tejan Kabbah's hand-picked successor losing