First of all, my hearty congratulations to the new Mayor of Freetown, Herbert George-Williams. I called him just after 11:00 a.m. today, 22nd July 2008 and said more or less these words to him:
‘Congratulations on a decisive win in the election for mayor. The people of Freetown have spoken in a loud and clear voice that you are their choice. The democratic process has worked again in Freetown and throughout Sierra Leone and I am happy for that. For my part, I am still interested in Freetown achieving the goals I set myself to accomplish and I will continue to work to make those goals a reality. So, I trust that I will still get the materials I asked you for when I visited you and sent you a letter confirming my request as I still have my city very much at heart.My best wishes during your tenure as mayor.’
He accepted and asked if I was going to be in town for a while. I said that when I came to Freetown in January 2008, it was to make Freetown my home. He said he asked because he wanted to get a chance for us to sit down and talk. I told him this would be fine, confirmed my telephone number to him and I wished him well once more.
This brief call was completed at 11:16 a.m. Tuesday, 22nd July, 2008.Our mayor has a herculean task in front of him and, even though I am sorry that I will not be occupying his chair, I am not sad: I do not envy him. He has won the election for mayor clearly and squarely under an APC banner and in a democratic process I favour. I have said that the local election should not be on a party basis because our people are not at the stage where they can make the informed choice that a truly democratic system entails but I am glad that the election process was both civil and transparently fair in Freetown and, for the most part, throughout thecountry.
Thus, while Sierra Leone may be last in the world for development, it is first certainly in Africa for a fail-safe institutionalised democratic process.I did not get a party symbol. I did not ask for one. I did not want one. I believe it is the parties we have had, not the multi party system that made Sierra Leone become the failed state that it has been for many years and that it still is, so there was no chance in the world that I would have accepted the symbol of either the APC or the SLPP.
Under different circumstances, I would have considered contesting as a PMDC candidate. My first run as Mayor of Freetown this cycle will also be my last. I will not be a candidate in 2012. What the election process has shown me is that our current three-party system does not serve Sierra Leone well. Therefore, as I announced in the forum at Family Kingdom on Wednesday, 2nd July, I will be calling a meeting shortly for interested parties to join in the formation of a true third force for Sierra Leone.
As I said in 1996, this third force should be neither APC nor SLPP, neither NPRC nor RUF. These last two have gone into history. As I say now, the third force is not PMDC. PMDC had the possibility of being that third force, but it ended up being only the harbinger of that force, a point I make in the 25-essay book-length manuscript I wrote last year during the election process.The three parties are all regional parties in base or origin especially of their leader: APC North, SLPP and PMDC South and South East. The party I hope to take part in promoting must be a stem and branch party,north, east west, central and south-a unity party.
Although I am calling people together, including members of the existing parties interested in progress, I will not be the leader of that party.I did not compete in this election to lose. I wanted to win and win big. But only one person can emerge as a winner and in this instance, that person is Herbert George-Williams of the APC.
My campaign manifesto focused on decongesting Freetown of filth, refuse, people, traders and traffic, and of beautifying it including creating a New City Centre and Green Zone and designating Freetown as Jasmine City. I will be donating two boxes intended for Congo Market and Dove Cot to the Freetown City Council (FCC). The design is one that my associate in the design and execution of the box has a financial interest in. My agreement with him because of the unpaid time he put in was that he would have the right of first refusal on any contract to build the boxes.
I will not have any compensation. It is my gift to my beloved city. Whether we have 1,000 new metal bins or not as proposed in the World Bank agreement with the FCC, we still need those boxes.I will be giving my concept of a new green zone to the mayor and council and to the president and the parliament to use if they wish to prepare for Sierra Leone’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2011.
Gold is the official colour of a fiftieth anniversary celebration and I chose it as my colour, the colour that a torchlight emits a golden ray.I have already submitted a detailed proposal of traffic changes that will relieve the congestion in Freetown to the National Traffic Coordinator, Mr D S Koroma with whom I have already had a few meetings.
It includes a plan to build a four-lane road from east to west, passing by and using the current road to FBC from Berry Street as one leg going up and then going down by a mountain ridge to Blackhall Road and a second leg going up and winding its way along from Blackhall Road to form a lower tier to the FBC road going down and ending about Macauley street and Mountain Cut. There are alternative routes that go further east before coming down to the Kissy Brook area.
My plan to manufacture 20,000 homes that will bring thousands of jobs for mostly young people will continue, even though the focus of my activities in this regard are likely to shift to Liberia. My friends and associates have urged me to pursue Liberia as the locale for the first shelter prefab homes, arguing that it is readier for the business than Sierra Leone. The shelter programme as I call it, is a Mano River Union/ECOWAS undertaking but my love for Sierra Leone and wanting it to be first delayed my taking it elsewhere. That love continues unabated but business is business.There is a saying that gratitude is the least of vices but ingratitude is the worst of vices.
I do not want to be remiss in thanking all those who have helped me at a time like this. First and foremost, I would like to thank my daughter and son-in-law, Sonia Peters Kassambara and Hamady Kassambara for their financial support. This campaign would have been impossible without their help. About a half dozen friends also helped me with pledges and contributions to my campaign. The Timber Association donated timber to build one large box and one small one. Building materials stores contributed nails, a hammer and other materials.
One computer store donated a ream of A4 paper.Very important to my morale during the campaign has been the contribution of my videographer, Mr. Daniel Jones who took the pictures detailing the filth of Freetown. My nephew, Julius Johnson worked selflessly and tirelessly during the crucial weeks leading up to the campaign in various ways, including those of driver and poster fixer. Mr Sahr Ngegba (alias Abegger) also mobilised young men and women who came to meetings to hear me and to serve as observers during election day.
Above all, I wish to thank my spirit guides who nudged me into entering the race, first by directing me to St Mark’s Church, Lumley, on Sunday 17th February 2008 to hear a message delivered by a second year theological college student, Mr Eli Pratt, taken from revelations 3:8. It says words to this effect: ’I have opened a door for you which no man can ever close.’ Those words have been my mainstay when so many obstacles stood in my path.
My thanks, in the end, are due hugely to the relative few voters who decided to vote on issues and not for party symbols. They represent a first wedge to build on for the future.I have told my younger friends over the years never to go into politics poor, because you either stay poor or steal to get rich. I have said for myself that I would not get into politics until politics got into me. This year it has.I got into politics poor, but I have untapped sources and resources, like the untapped wealth of Sierra Leone,to help bring me abundance.
Principal among my resources are the album of songs I’m concluding on the elections and 10 unpublished books I have written including one titled: ‘7 Laws of Love.’ I plan to do final revisions on that book and market it now to bring abundance. The law of abundance says: give in order to get. The Bible has it as this: It is more blessed to give than to receive. I will market this book and will use part of the proceeds to help fund a distance education programme for Sierra Leone, another chunk to fund a book publishing company and still another portion to help launch the new unity party by whatever name it will be called if the book succeeds to the extent that I hope it will.
For the life of our relatively young experimental democracy, voting has been on a party basis and people have voted overwhelmingly for party symbols rather than for political or social issues on account of the level of literacy in the country. I will do everything in my power with the resources I have to make sure that this is the last time when that rule holds in our country: they should continue to vote for party symbol but in a practice that keeps them well informed.It remains only for me to say that this is an election that did not end in failure for me. I did not succeed, but neither did I fail. My mentor in this process is the late American inventor Benjamin Franklin who invented the light bulb at his 10,000th try. When he was asked how he felt when he failed in 9,999 ways, he said that he had not failed but had found 9,999 ways in which the light bulb would not work. I have found one way how not to win an election in our country. I have confirmed that in a symbol system, ideas do not count,especially when they do not get down to the grass roots involving huge investments of capital.
The process has taught me a lot that I will use in the future. I also worked on my talent as a song writer. Unfortunately,the time crunch, funding problems and a lack of infrastructure brought it only to those who heard the lyrics on our poda poda as we travelled a couple of days in our bid. The primary lyric we had planned for the airwaves goes like this: Jonathan peters Na wi yon man Fɔ meyor, 2008. For the initial script and tune I am hugely indebted to composer and arranger Francis Macfoy whose father was Scrubby: ‘Nobody like scrubby wehn i geht di banjo morni.’
His assistant, Mr. Michael Sandy, a budding young talent Ms Sylvia Roberts and I made the complement of voices accompanied by Francis Macfoy on the guitar or electronic organ.Election for dis yia na Salone Na lokal isyu dehm for alaw; Las yia gud gud wan wi geht pati yon Indipehndehnt for geht ple we naw. Chorus: For yeri wit yes dehm no to yes is Uman dehm rol wes dehm no to wes is Wan porsin kin kres, tu nor de kresis July vot nor mek sehns pati besis.
As everyone can see, I had a good time with this exercise. I will share its gems with you in one or more albums. There is a saying that a people gets the government it deserves. It will be good to see that the new government at city hall will be the right one to move Freetown from poverty to a first level of wealth.Although I did not think the election should have been on a party basis and on the basis of symbols, I do believe in symbolism.
In my poems, I have said and I still say that I want to take Sierra Leone from last to first through business. I have joined Sierra Leone as last in the election for mayor and, together, we will work to make sure that it and our new party come first in the future. Once more, my best wishes to the new substantive mayor, His Worshipful Herbert George-Williams and to the people of Freetown.
Jonathan Alexander Peters
Photo: Professor Jonathan Peters.
Comments