By Karamoh Kabbah
May 7, 2006 in Maryland USA was a great day for Sierra Leoneans from all walks of life as they listened with rapt attention at a tense debate among members of the leading political parties that are contenders of the upcoming 2007 general elections in post war Sierra Leone.
The debate was the second in a series organized by the Youth for Sierra Leone Improvement (YSLI). YSLI is a non-governmental organization with no affiliation to any political party that seeks to empower the youths of Sierra Leone for future leadership.
In attendance were the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), the All Peoples Congress (APC) that ruled the nation for twenty-four years (from 1968 until it was ousted in a military coup in 1992,) the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) of Charles Margai and the United National People’s Party (UNPP) of Dr. John Karefa-Smart.
The SLPP high-profile representatives Hon. Victor Reider, a Member of Parliament and SLPP national Publicity Secretary and J.J. Saffa, the national Secretary General, who happened to be in the United States to resolve internecine problems amongst the SLPP chapters in the diaspora, came about an hour late to represent the ruling SLPP in the debate. Although the APC representatives where late as well, they came a bit earlier than the SLPP representatives.
In a separate meeting with the debate participants and their executives before the commencement of the debate, Dr. Michel Sho-Sawyer, the Chairman and Founder of YSLI, who was also the moderator of the debate, slapped the SLPP and the APC with twenty dollars fine each for tardiness. But they refused to pay the fine.
Representing the other sides were Hon. Victor Foh and Osman Yasaneh for the APC, Mr. Tejan Savage and the mercurial youth Secretary General, Sidie Yahya Tunis for the PMDC and Mr. Osman Turay for the UNPP. The latter was a lone debater.
The SLPP Mr. J.J. Saffa conceded the SLPP recognizes youth unemployment,adding that there are robust youth agricultural programs underway to address and support youth unemployment.
The UNPP’s Mr. Turay stated that education was free in the 60s and they in fact got allowances to attend school. “How can students focus on education when at FBC they have to fetch firewood to cook food? This is a place where we learned to sit on tables and eat with fork and spoon,” he stated.
The PMDC’s Tejan savage fired back that food security is an endemic problem-cannot be solved through youth employment. He explained that the PMDC will introduce a complete infrastructural development in a complete overhaul of the agricultural sector to ensure food security not only depends on youth employment.
The APC’s Victor Foh reminisced on the massive APC infrastructural projects of the past:
“When the APC came to power in the 60s, there were only five schools in the whole of the northern province. The northern province had 50 schools by the time the APC was ousted out of power in 1992,” he stated.
Mr. J.J. Saffa had claimed that the SLPP has moved the nation from a -17 per cent to 6.5 per cent growth rate, and Mr. Tunis in a mercurial disposition refuted that the economy moved into positive numbers with donor deposits with Sierra Leone government doing almost nothing in 2002 at 4.6 per cent. He stated that the growth attained peaked in 2003 by 9.3 and 7.4 in 2004 when Sierra Leone exceeded the UNDP’s 7 per cent millennium development goal for Africa recommendation.
In another development, Mr. Tunis charged that the “Sierra Leone economy is on a pair of crutches-one is the World Bank and the IMF and the other is donor nations and once these crutches are removed it will collapse.”
He created the climax of the night when he ended his presentation with a sardonic inflection thus; “... and both the APC and the SLPP have made Sierra Leone into a sunny nation for shady leaders.”
But the PMDC’s Mr. Tunis’remarks unnerved Mr. J.J. Saffa and Mr. Reider so much so that they became pretty coarse with their responses to questions. Mr. J.J. Saffa showed distress when he went on to challenge every document the Tunis tendered in support of his claims. He openly challenged the document from Freetown, which stated that the SLPP is not ready for the elections for failing to meet some of the requirements. The same document stated that the PMDC is the only party that has met such requirements.
It was however a great night and the YSLI will repeat the exercise amongst the presidential candidates themselves in June 23 at the Miatta conference center in Freetown and the keynote speaker for the event will be the United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Mr. Thomas Hull.
At the end of the debate I ran into Dr. Sho-Sawyer and asked him; what is the importance of the exercise to your organization?
He said: “It is important for the youth population back home to unite under a credible organization in order to hold the political stakeholders accountable for their actions toward the you".
Photo: YSLI members.
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