Sierra Leone: Nation Lives Up to Stereotype

Posted in News by AGavin on September 7th, 2007

Source: All Africa 

If the voters had produced a clear winner in Sierra Leone’s national elections on August 11, there probably wouldn’t be many editorials and commentaries quite like this one. 

Then, millions voted for a new president and national assembly in only the second elections since a 10-year civil war devastated the West African country. It was only the audacious intervention of the British military in 2001 that helped rout and disarm perhaps the most vicious militia to ever roam the continent; but not before they had committed some of the most macabre crimes imaginable, including hacking off people’s hands, apparently to stop them from voting. 

Over the past six years, Sierra Leone has been mostly out of the news as it went on the mend. Kimberly Process 

Neighbours like Liberia also found peace (electing Africa’s first woman head of state); a semblance of normality returned to national discourse; efforts have been made to hunt down and prosecute ringleaders of the civil war, including former President Charles Taylor; international human rights activists bullied diamond merchants into signing the Kimberly Process, which criminalises the so-called conflict diamonds, while Hollywood has also weighed in, with a blockbuster movie, Blood Diamond that highlighted the hand of Western businessmen in fuelling the conflict. Last month’s election was supposed to be the culmination of a process of reconciliation that was both unprecedented and surprising. 

The poll was conducted by the Sierra Leoneans. Many observers were surprised at both the high turn-out, as well as the civility of the campaigns. Vice-President Solomon Berewa and opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma garnered the most votes in the first round of balloting to succeed Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, who is constitutionally barred from re-election, but because no one passed the 55 per cent test, the two will tussle it out in a second round today. 

However, it appears as if the optimism about Sierra Leone - and what it can teach Africa - came a month too early. In the days since the first round of balloting, there has been rising tension, fist-fights between rival supporters from the two largest parties, and accusations that the vice president was re-arming one of the country’s most feared militias. All this is in stark contrast to the almost festive atmosphere before the first round of voting. 

The setbacks have been so jarring that President Tejan Kabbah threatened to take drastic measures, including banning political rallies. The rival supporters have maintained an uneasy truce, although the words between them are still virulent. While Sierra Leone’s latest chapter is disturbing, it is not really surprising. Too often, ‘democracy architects’ are quick to equate regular elections to democracy, which only makes a bad situation worse in many African countries. 

These democracy projects make the holding of an election the be-all and end-all of nation building. Unfortunately, the main sponsors, the United Nations and especially the US, often fail to appreciate the fragile nature of states that have just emerged from traumas like genocide or civil war. Voters will probably be euphoric for a short while, but quickly revert to form, as the pressures that spawned the original conflicts manifest in different forms. 

The sectarian violence in Iraq and the flare-up of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo are just two examples of countries with democratically elected parliaments, and barely functional governments. Part of the problem is that the players in any new post-conflict dispensation are often hewn from the conflict-fabric. 

In Sierra Leone for example, Mr Koroma is fronted by the old guard of the All People’s Congress (APC), which is implicated in the country’s mismanagement. Indeed, most leading candidates for elections to the national assembly are the same old faces accused of corruption and nepotism. Mineral-rich Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, and people are more desperate to get jobs and electricity than to get their man into State House. 

The irony is even if today ends peacefully, Sierra Leone might get more of the same old treatment.