By James Tamba Lebbie
A friend visiting Sierra Leone from Ohio, USA amidst the “timbergate” scandal in November last year told me if Sierra Leone was a decent and civilized democracy, Vice President Samuel Sam Sumana’s political obituary would have been written and thrashed in the litter bin. And even though I reminded my friend that this is Sierra Leone where legality and decency among other virtues are subservient to political expediency, for reasons, I was inclined to believe that our Vice President is already a political corpse.
My judgment then was informed by a number of events and factors, all of which were apparently swinging against him. Suffice it to point out that the Al-Jazeera documentary on illegal logging in Sierra Leone took Freetown by storm and sparked a heated debate in the country during which many called for the Vice President’s resignation. At a point, even the Minister of Information, Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, and by extension the government distanced itself from the Vice President. And then came the Anti-Corruption Commission’s focus on the matter, which promised the people of Sierra Leone to fully investigate the allegation and make public its findings. The situation was compounded when some 18 US Congressmen wrote to the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton demanding a thorough investigation of the scam. To add to the tension, the UK-based Oxford Analytica’s 19 December 2011 publication says threats remain to the Mano River basin including Sierra Leone, citing the illicit logging allegation against the Vice President as an indication of “significant potential for disputes and grievances over governance of natural resources….” Amidst all these tides, Politico was reliably informed that the President even advised his Number Two man to quit and save his government from further embarrassment. It is important to note here that according to legal experts, the President does not have the Constitutional right to fire his Vice President because both of them were voted into office by the electorate.
And a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. For instance, the new year started with newspaper reports presenting a picture of a President caught on the horns of a dilemma with regard the appointment of his running mate. His radar, we were made to understand, is fixed on two people: the State House Chief of Staff, Kelfala Marrah and a Member of Parliament for the ruling All Peoples Congress, Chernor Maju Bah. To muddy the water further the open rivalry between the Vice President and the Minister of Internal Affairs, Musa Tarawallie, which has sometimes led to undermining the authority of the former, has fuelled speculation that the writings are on the wall for the Vice President.
But like the proverbial saying that a month is a long time in politics, the public endorsement last week of the Vice President as running mate by ruling party Scribe, Victor Bockarie Foe has left many baffled. It is not clear whether he was speaking for himself, the party or the President. Whatever the position, there are far reaching ramifications for such a pronouncement. If Mr. Foh was speaking for himself and not taking the party line, it shows all is not well within the APC on this nagging issue of running mate. In other words, it could be an indication of squabbles and internal party wrangling. On the contrary, if he was toeing the official party line, and by extension, that of the President as a way of testing the waters, it is perhaps a signal that the President has run out of options; for it is already in the public domain that there is no love lost between the two leaders. What therefore could account for this apparent U-turn? Political expediency, according to many pundits and observers.
In specific terms, many believe the answer to this new development lies in the just-concluded voter registration exercise by the countries elections body. And in a country like Sierra Leone where voting is almost strictly done along regional and ethnic lines, some analysts say the registration figures do not seem to be encouraging for the ruling party that is determined to avoid a run-off. The provisional figures published on 29 March, 2012 show that the south-eastern stronghold of the opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party is slightly ahead of the Northern Stronghold of the ruling APC. The provisional figures are 560,103 registrants in the east; 537,745 registrants in the south; 928,943 in the north; and 674,508 registrants in the Western Area.
Meanwhile, I’m emphasizing on Northern stronghold as opposed to North-western because although the APC won all parliamentary seats in the Western Area in the 2007 parliamentary elections, it is no sufficient proof that the Western Area, especially the urban district is a stronghold of the APC. It only happened to come out that way because of the first-past-the-post election system we have in Sierra Leone. To buttress my argument that the Western Area Urban is arguably a “swing state” and not a stronghold of the ruling party, the SLPP in the 2002 general elections won a landslide majority in Freetown. Five years later, the SLPP (in power then) lost miserably to the then opposition APC. But even at that, the figures were 249,056 votes for the APC as against 115,771 for the SLPP, almost a third of the total votes in the Western Area Urban District. Impressive though the figure for the APC would seem, it is not an indication of having a stronghold in that area.
So, with Freetown apparently becoming increasingly unpredictable of late, the eastern district of Kono, home of the Vice President is becoming a potential battleground. My reader should be reminded that in the 2007 Parliamentary election, the SLPP won all but one seat (six as against one). Similarly, in the Presidential race, the SLPP polled 74,458 votes against 52,908 votes for the APC. However, with the APC in power, many believe Kono has gradually moved toward the ruling party, not least because it is the home of the Vice President and the First Lady. This is not to suggest however, that the Vice President is loved in his hometown, neither is Kono a stronghold of the APC. Far from it. Support for the Vice President by the Kono people is just out of ethnic consideration and identity. He could not be useful to them but they can mobilize against any entity that wants to alienate one of their own. In this sense, Kono can be placed in the same category as Freetown as “swing states”, which many political pundits believe would determine the outcome of the November 2012 polls. But also, this perceived shift of political allegiance is not to be taken for granted because sections of the people of Kono are reported to have vowed to return to the SLPP if the Vice President is sent parking. So, one could argue that from this stand point, the endorsement of the Vice President as running mate for the 2012 polls by no less a person than the National Secretary General of the ruling party (and if indeed he was reading from an official party script) is on the grounds of political expediency.
And there could be other pointers that the President has almost settled for his Vice as his running mate even if grudgingly. The much-trumpeted promise by the country’s anti-graft body to investigate and make public the report of the illegal logging allegation involving the Vice President and other public officials is still at the level of rhetoric. In my view, it is indicative of the President’s indecisiveness on his running mate conundrum. I’m inclined to believe that the Anti-Corruption Commission will only find the Vice President wanting if his boss has lost faith him. On the contrary, if the President and his party endorse him, then the ACC report will never see the light of day.
Whatever the situation, Vice President Sam Sumana is clearly an albatross around the neck of the President. While the former has no doubt, brought the image of APC particularly and the country generally into disrepute through his allege corrupt deals and which could cost the APC votes among critical and independent voters, leaving him out of the race now risk alienating a strategic constituency in the east that is already poised to go back to the opposition SLPP. And with election as a number game, the President’s verdict on his Vice President would be contingent on whether or not it would enhance his re-election chances.
