TOO MANY COUPS IN PAOPA GOVERNMENT
…Electoral, Accountability, Others
President Bio- PhD Holder in Coups
Opinion
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
Critics have tagged the Julius Maada Bio-led Paopa government as one of internal coups orchestrated by its top echelons against targeted institutional heads and members of other arms of the political administration.
Shortly after coming to power in 2018, the Bio-led government levelled trumped-up allegations of electoral malpractices against certain democratically elected lawmakers and succeeded in removing ten of them from Parliament.
This action, which in the critics’ opinion was an administrative coup effectuated in the legislative arm of the government, Parliament to be specific, deflated the swelling number of Members of Parliament on the opposition’s side and gave the government a smooth ride each time a legislation was tabled in the House for debate and eventual ratification.
The other administrative coup, which the critics say was the first, occured in the Judiciary arm of the government where the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Charles Francis Margai, was axed in jiffy, some two weeks after his appointment for vehemently warning against the use of “Orders from Above” emphatically stating a strong determination to reject anyone who did.
Within the executive arm, however, certain dismissals of persons by the President are said to have come as a result of petty grudges and jealousy by others within the political system, the critics call it internal social coups – reason why reasons for some dismissals were not always advanced.
What some of the critics also consider as a coup is when a corrupt conscience took over the better part of handlers of the country’s democratic institutions to shrug off probity in their state duties and then worked subterfuges that undermined the democratic process. These satisfied the whims and caprices of politicians by deviating from the usual constituency system and brought into practice the Proportional Representation (PR) system of government. This, including the unwarranted midterm census, among others were the miscellaneous activities of the paopa government that conjointly actualized them the popular electoral coup, the major of all the paopa triumphs!
The country held multi-tier elections on 24th June 2023. The global elections observing missions that witness the process in their entirety proclaimed the elections were manipulated and rigged, not in tandem with international best practice.
Though it was believed that the main challenger of the incumbent won the elections, President Bio reportedly hijacked that victory and then established a second tenure government, and all efforts by players from all fronts to get Bio and the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) to authenticate his claimed victory by publishing the disaggregated results of those elections polling station by polling station fell on deaf ears, and it remained constantly not worth attempting. What followed as the aftermath of that electoral skirmish remain a history.
Since then, Sierra Leone is held to have been plunged into deep hell. The country now reels in financial quagmire so that the government could not bankroll its development programmes, and everyone is suffering the brunt without any end in sight to it yet!
The critics say as if all of this is not enough, the paopa government has seemingly couped against accountability in state institutions again. The suspension of the Auditor General and her deputy, and seeking for their removal from office by a two-thirds parliamentary majority is a malicious coup against them because they fearlessly stood against corruption and favouritism for the good of country.
From reactions to the Tribunal Report so far, it could not be authoritatively state that Lara Taylor-Pearce and Tamba Momoh are guilty of “professional misconduct” or “breach of confidentiality” as indicted, except where biases reign supreme to justify reasons for their suspension and eventual dismissal from offices. But when internal coups are too many in a political administration, the top cadre is also bound to successfully plot against itself by woeful failure to leave behind the right legacies, according to the critics.