April 26, 2021
Albert Baron Ansu
Nobody is doomsaying, but the wave of political and social drama unfolding in country is a telltale sign pointing to a tumultuous future. The elections are quite distant away in 2023, but the heat that is now emitted from politicians and sections of the citizenry is indicative of frustration over the loss of power.
The desperation to make a political comeback can be felt and seen in the opposition All Peoples Congress. It is not going to be toned down, many here are convinced. It means we just have to brace up to insist on sanity.
It is getting more frustrating when the incumbent Sierra Leone Peoples Party is assiduously working to make its mark in key areas of governance, infrastructural and human capital development. The validations from the development partners are galling the opposition to foment acts of sabotage. No opposition is going to be happy about the good things the incumbent might be doing- providing stimulus to small business, widening the scope of education access and quality, embarking on road construction and rural electrification, providing support to farmers, building systems to assure fiscal probity, making revenue mobilization gains, effecting prompt salary payment and gradual increment in pay packages of critical sectors including the security sector…. These are unassailable pluses that you cannot take away from the balance sheet of the ruling government.
The President was forthright that the fixing is not sufficient much work must be done by refraining to do the things that had not work well. And in the drift from the past the political sloganeering of treading the new direction can be appreciated. It is in that vein that the government is all over the place in a seeming rush to do more and make up for the accretion of rottenness that was inherited.
Sadly, the opposition cannot be happy. They will carry a frown like a virus and infect their constituents to embark in acts calculated to throw spanners in the work of the ruling government. Do a profile of those stealing the electricity cables in terms of capturing their political leanings…
Such a predisposition is bound to be at odds with the law. Then it becomes an issue for the Police as first contact with the law to ensure national stability based on promoting the rule of law.
Already, we are seen the varied forms troubling acts that are testing Police preparedness. Going forward it would crescendo into major acts of violence as we progress towards the campaign periods next year.
Early system analysis must be heightened by the Office of National Security in intelligence gathering, sharing of data and monitoring of trends to forestall the full blown crisis that people are hatching. The lawlessness of the opposition lawmakers in besieging parliament to stymie a legitimate constitutional process is one telltale sign that prop up our fears and concerns.
It is even calling for robust Police preparedness. They have to hone professional skills and tact to contend with the grim possibilities ahead of us. This point is even important considering the fact that the Police from individual dispositions can sometimes be susceptible to the political influences in compromising their roles and creating damaging institutional reputations. This had been the situation that necessitated the employing of military aid to civil powers as a constitutional recourse to save the state from messy incidents.
Structurally, we need an apolitical Police force, which is quite difficult a possibility given our context that is tainted with ethnocentric biases and sympathies. Even where the government is aspiring not to leave anybody behind in the reforms and service delivery arena, it doesn’t make any sense to opposition proselytes brainwashed to believe that without them in governance nothing must be seen as working for the good of the ordinary Sierra Leonean. This is a damned lie.