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Sierra Leone: Govt Has Real Chance to Boost Peace
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GUEST COLUMN
7 August 2008
Posted to the web 7 August 2008
Francois Grignon
Although Sierra Leone has made marked political and economic progress since the end of its civil war in 2002, worrying institutional and social ills are still untreated, foreign aid flows have dropped and the stabilizing presence of a United Nations office there is coming to an end.
There is, however, a valuable opportunity to build a national consensus and pursue a peace-building and consolidation project that could put the country back on its feet for the long term.
In the August-September 2007 elections, the opposition All People's Congress (APC) wrested leadership from the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party. The almost entirely peaceful transfer of power was a testament to the growing strength of the country's fledgling democracy and gave the government the glow of legitimacy at home and abroad.
In his first year, President Ernest Bai Koroma has given the impression he is dealing with the difficult issues head-on, but results are mixed.
To his credit he has streamlined the civil service, demanded ministers be held accountable and, albeit expensively, brought electricity to the capital, Freetown. But the public and bureaucrats alike say corruption remains a way of life. In fighting this affliction, Koroma emphasises the need for widespread "attitudinal change." This is easier said than done.
Koroma's genuine reformist intentions are also stymied by long-entrenched ways of doing things. The old system of patrons diverting state resources to their hometowns in return for loyal political support hampers cohesion in central government and fosters corruption.
More important, the people's strong feelings of regional and ethnic identity continue to split the country between the northern-aligned APC and the southern-aligned People's Party. Once in office, the president found himself under intense pressure to reward northern voters with jobs in the civil service and lucrative state-run companies. Now that he has replaced many southern staff appointed by the People's Party, calls for national reconciliation ring somewhat hollow.
Widespread poverty, rising food prices and a growing army of socially-alienated, jobless youth pose a constant problem which, left unaddressed, could prove disastrous in both social and security terms. Local elections on July 5 showed strong support for the APC and bolstered Sierra Leone's democratic credentials, but some heated contests broke out into violent clashes. Faced with these problems it is no wonder Koroma has asked the people of Sierra Leone to wait three years before judging his administration.
To win his citizens' trust Koroma needs to deliver basic services and move quickly to ensure reliable water and electricity supplies, repair roads and create more jobs for youth while pressing on with public sector reform and increasing government transparency and accountability. Despite the daunting nature of the tasks ahead, there is an opportunity to accomplish two things at once.
Koroma can boost service delivery while simultaneously smoothing potentially dangerous faultlines in society by moving away from donor-driven reconstruction and launching a nationally-owned project for which all Sierra Leoneans can feel responsibility. A sustained dialogue between state and population on government priorities is essential to build political consensus across the North-South divide. While implementing concrete projects on the ground, the government needs at the same time to nurture national cohesion.
At the same time, foreign donors still have an important role to play. The United Kingdom in particular, for a long time Sierra Leone's most reliable prop, should not desert her former colony now.
Still, bilateral partners, who usually prefer to support poverty reduction and institution-building at the technical level, may well be reluctant to fund the essentially political enterprise of national consensus-building. However, the United Nations' Peacebuilding Commission, set up in 2005 to bridge the gap between post-conflict reconstruction and new development initiatives, is well placed to take the lead in ensuring the consolidation of the country's political stability.
With the United Nations mission due to leave in September, the Peacebuilding Commission could take over as a key diplomatic broker between the government and its development partners and provide critical support for cross-regional and party consultations on the government peace-building strategy.
Sierra Leone has undoubtedly come a long way since fighting stopped six years ago, but not so far that the international community can just walk away. Given the necessary help from abroad, Sierra Leone's government now has a real opportunity to reinvigorate the country's reconstruction and at the same time boost political cohesion. It is up to President Koroma and his government to show the way.
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Francois Grignon is Africa Program Director of the International Crisis Group
From an ordinary Sierra leonean standpoint,and from a commonality of perspective with Francois Grignon,the real chance to "boost the peace" in our country is rested with the leaders of government.The leaders must not only talk,but also,show the good examples and exhibit the best ethical practices in the overall discharge of constitutional and state responsibilities even when there are no viewers.Sierra leone's backwardness then and now has been the effect of unbriddle corruption. What makes it more painful to the bearing and viewing public is the display of the loot by high level government functionaries with attitude,the remote and immediate reason... [Read Full Text]
Who are the leaders of the territorial state of Sierra Leone? That is not a sixty four million dollar question for me, if a negative answer be deemed an answer.
EBK is not the leader of the proto fascist state of Sierra Leone. That is the negative answer.
The relationship between political power and money is nothing new: it is as old as any any poitical entity, whether it be a republic, an empire, a Kingdom or a nation state or, in the case of Sierra Leone, a territorial state. I shall not revisit here my thesis... [Read Full Text]
My friend, Mr. imunu, having studied your postings, I have concluded that you care about the destiny of Sierra Leone. Accordingly, please accept my comments infra in a spirit of problem solving.
As I have stated in several postings, the leaders of the demo/fascist state occupying the territory of Sierra Leone are not autonomous: they are proxies of hidden principalities of dirty money. Respectfully---qccordingly---the expectation that such soupist leaders, the current one inclusive, are not choreographed by the structural conditions of existence of an occupying territorial state is, at best, naive.
It is not EBK who mandates... [Read Full Text]
Francois Grignon's summary and commentary August 7, 2008 based on the recent report on Sierra Leone by the International Crisis Group is certainly worth consideration. The report itself is available in pdf format at http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/africa/west_africa/143_sierra_ leone___a_new_era_of_reform.pdf. It comes not long after another report by Suliman Baldo of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Both are focused on political efforts needed at the top, which are important. Creative efforts at the grass roots are also important. For example, the work of a grass roots organization known as Fambul Tok (family talk) is helping villages revive traditional reconciliation/cleansing ceremonies. Their work... [Read Full Text]
"PROGRESS TO WHAT?
The ideology or prejudice of "progress" was hatched by the propandists of the so-called 'European' Englightenment, whose singular task was to debunk any and all traditions in in any and all social sites that could not be "ratified" in the "court" of "reason." The political correlate was the development of republican forms of goverment in the 'autonomous' cities by burghers of a Europe then fully anchored in the hegemony of Kingdoms and the Catholic Church.
Hence, progress discourse is historically situated in a site that refused to plant the same discourse and its institutional 'images' in African... [Read Full Text]
PROGESS TO WHAT?: ENCORE!
The 'development' experts have no answer to the question posed. Development, as contrued by them, is a directive from the 'West' on the 'proper' archaeology and architecture of economy, society and politics.
Their fatal error is the historically vacuous assumption of the existence of nations in the African countries they 'administer.' I have developed elsewhere bulldozers of this wrongheaded assumption: a dangerous assumption, to boot.
These experts, clones of Harvard and Oxford savants, are really full of it: historically dense, they assume that the destiny of the "West" OUGHT to be the... [Read Full Text]
PROGESS TO WHAT? ACES DEUCE: PATRIACAL VIOLENCE---NON UND NEIN.
Since the experts have decided to go "mumu," I'll rumble alone.
Have you noticed that most African social formations are patriachal, and that these formations were whopped by British and other imperialisms, bloodied while the men ran the show?
Have you also regarded the unacceptable levels of violence against family members, what the "West" ambiguously calls "domestic violence," in African social formations in general, and the population of the territorial state of Sierra Leone in particular? The point I want to make is that the GRAND DEFEAT may... [Read Full Text]
It is strange that an incident centering on the 'invasion' of the territory of Sierra Leone by an alleged cocaine hauling airplane has set off a series of reflective productions that challenge the attribution of nationality to most African countries; Sierra Leone, in particular.
Stranger still is the dearth of a productive engagement on the issue, excepting Mr. imunu. Surprised, I am not; bouyed by the silence of the grave, I am.
Dazzling, in my opinion, is the weak theoretical structure of Sierra Leone politics: even a child in reflection could have come up with my SOUPIST THEORY... [Read Full Text]
REFLECTIONS ON AUTONOMOUS AFRICAN THINKING: DECONSTRUCTING THE EURO-AMERICAN COGNITIVE NOOSE. ________________________________
A new generation of Africans is in the offing; and this generation has nothing to do with biological age---it has, au contraire, EVERYTHING to do with cognitive maturity. And, cognitive maturity is obviously underdetermined by biological age. Henceforth I shall simply call the theoretical bulldozer Autonomous African Thinking " AFRICAN INDEPENDENT THINKING."
NEGATIONS ---------
1. We, short for "AFIRCAN INDEPENDENT THINKING", henceforth, denounce on theoretical and practical grounds any and all forms of cognitive xenophobia. Historically, this cognitive virus has... [Read Full Text]
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