By Mohamed A. Jalloh (USA)
The note of appreciation to the people of Sierra Leone (SL) commending our political parties, the National Electoral Commission and others that is published below this article in this edition of the pioneering Patriotic Vanguard, created quite a heated controversy prior to the finalization of its original draft. Specifically, an interesting objection was raised to the following statement which ultimately substantially survived to the final press release: "We would also like to commend the SLPP upon ultimately conceding defeat and assisting the new APC government in ensuring a smooth transfer of power."
According to our objecting friends, the retention of the word "ultimately" in the above sentence is, variously, a negative characterization of the SLPP, a display of partisanship in favor of the APC, kicking the losing SLPP when it is down, a lack of diplomacy or harping on the immaterial past instead of the future.
The question to be answered amidst this raging controversy is a simple one: Do these various objections have any merit? In my humble opinion, they do not. In order to see this, witness the following analysis:
As was noted during the discussion of the objections cited above, the ultimate utility of a commendation is to "encourage authors of actions to make improvement." However, it is difficult for one to encourage another to improve his or her actions if one does not accurately describe the person’s past action. In short, one must faithfully, however painfully, accurately recite the facts attesting to the other’s past actions.
By that standard, it is difficult to find fault with our patriotic friend and the SL Network’s president, Amadu Massally’s commendation of the SLPP depicted in the proposed note of appreciation. As Amadu has noted, it is a fact that the SLPP did do exactly the actions he cited in commendation of the party — they ultimately conceded defeat.
Amadu could have stated in the body of the note of appreciation that the SLPP did so only after losing their court challenge — action which was expressly intended to stop the announcement of the election results. Such a statement would have been entirely factually accurate. However, in a show of magnanimity (which has been alluded to as diplomacy, but, tellingly, not in regard to Amadu’s gesture), Amadu elected not to include such unflattering details in the draft. Instead, he admirably chose to include the minimum possible detail — a single word, "ultimately," that was necessary for him to remain faithful to the facts.
Significantly, that single word represents the only difference between the latest competing version and Amadu’s revised version. In my humble opinion, the need to remain faithful to the facts, and the alternative available to do so in the form of the unflattering detailed statements of the SLPP’s actions, such as that cited above and which Amadu has elected not to use, should dissolve any residual objection to the draft sentence most recently proposed by Amadu, viz.
"We would also like to commend the SLPP upon ultimately conceding defeat and assisting the new APC government in ensuring a smooth transfer of power."
As regards the objection that the above statement is evidence of harping on the immaterial past instead of looking to the future, it is a truism that those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. Accordingly, to state that "harping on a past [] is not material," is to evince an insufficient appreciation of the predictable consequences of ignoring the lessons of the past. The emphasis, I should emphasize, is on consequences.
In my humble opinion, whether the SLPP sought to delay the conclusion of the presidential election by "just several hours or at most a day" is immaterial. What is immensely significant, as our Dr. Jonathan Peters accurately pointed out yesterday, is the insufficiently emphasized fact that the eleventh-hour attempt in court by the SLPP to stop the announcement of the winner of the presidential election was the last desperate act of a party that had employed a myriad of independently verified subterfuges uniformly designed to massively disenfranchise the people of SL.
Accordingly, to suggest that the SLPP’s action in seeking to stop the announcement of a winner in an election that it feared it had lost is "not material, I bet you, in the large scheme of things" is to ignore the nature, extent and timing of the SLPP’s role in the "large scheme of things." It would also unwisely send a signal to the SLPP that its actions in attempting to selfishly thwart the will of the people of SL are "not material."
Yet, on the contrary, the SLPP’s actions were explosively material since they could have plunged the country into entirely avoidable turmoil. That is why the SLPP must be encouraged to learn the most salutary lesson from its past — that there are consequences for its actions. That lesson starts with the open recognition of those past actions. Delivering such a lesson does not require the existence of a perfect society, as was suggested in objection to mention of the fact that the SLPP conceded defeat only ultimately. On the contrary, the existence of a perfect society would make such a lesson unnecessary. Thus, helping the SLPP to learn that lesson could be seen as moving it, and our country, further along the road towards a more perfect society.
It is for that reason that our patriotic friend, Amadu, and all of us who subscribe to the salutary principle that actions must have appropriate consequences, should hold our heads high. In holding firm to the truth about the elections, without fear or favor, we are continuing the admirable nascent practice of accountability in public service articulated by the National Electoral Commission’s chairlady, Dr. Christiana Thorpe, when she courageously announced the winner of the presidential election at an event that the SLPP had vainly tried to stop, viz. "There is no longer a place for fraud and malpractice in the Sierra Leone electoral system."
That relevance of that patriotic lesson is not limited to the SLPP. It is even more so to the victorious APC government of our new President Ernest Koroma, who happens to have been a classmate of quite a few of our valued members and my fellow student at Fourah Bay College. He ignores it in his general administration of our country at his own electoral peril.
Editors Note: Moh’m Jalloh(photo), a native of Sierra Leone resident in Maryland is the founding Managing Director of a financial services firm in suburban Washington, D.C., USA. The above article is adapted from his separate responses to two fellow members of SALONEDiscussion, the pioneering Internet discussion forum dedicated exclusively to the serious discussion of issues related to SL with the aim of advancing the development of the country. SALONEDiscussion is a co-sponsor of the press release commending political parties and others in SL.
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