Politicizing Our Future

The just ended Trade and Investment Fair has gained credible marks, with British premier Tony Blair making important contributions.

Accolades

The Ernest Koroma administration has won accolades for the conference, and most of the fears earlier expressed about the outcome of such an expensive forum has proved to be baseless as potential investors from different parts of the globe and from various sectors have shown an interest in coming to Sierra Leone to set up business.

However, with all the great expectations and hype generated during the conference, the political slant already given has thrown spanners in the works shown by the work of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party and the People’s Movement for Democratic Change.

Credibility

While the present has been busy giving credible information about the country to the potential investors, back home, the opposition has been busy, selling the ruling party as a bunch of corrupt opportunists who are trying to fleece the country. In the eyes of the opposition, there is no good in the whole process and that the bottom line is that it is another venture already slated to fail.

The Glen Eagles meeting, which was also another conference convened to win over donors and investors, under the past government of Mr. Ahmad Tejan-Kabbah was another forum where the great attributes of Sierra Leone were proclaimed. Investors and donor nation representatives were wooed with the promise of a new country. Alas, it proved to be a talk shop with the government representatives making false assurances of interest in carrying out their work efficiently. The Gleneagles meeting proved to be a disaster.

Wilderness

Now that the SLPP has found itself out in the political wilderness, they unfortunately slated everything happening in the country as coated with failures. The SLPP’s main contention is that they were marginalized and that they never received any invitation, apart from by word of mouth, to be part of a united force.

The SLPP has also made claims that when they were in power, their conference in Gleneagles included Ernest Koroma, then the leader of the opposition and that Sierra Leoneans from all works of life participated. Under the present situation, no opposition member was invited.

But would the present government take along members of the opposition, knowing the spate of oppositions as well as the series of articles and letters already sent to our donor partners describing the awkward situation in the country?

Bickering

Certainly, following the trend that has already existed in the country, and which had seen the reputation of the present administration being horse wiped through the constant bickering from the opposition, only a fool might allow such an odd bed fellow to share the same bed, or as in this case, the same conference room.

The power struggle has moved from Sierra Leone and has now entered the international community, and in this seemingly life or death struggle, the country, unfortunately is the worse to suffer.

Those who see development in the country only through the jaundiced eyes of politics might well be helping to lead the country astray. The solution for a country that has been seen as a failed state which, without the help of the international community would have been compared to Somalia, has now gone the further leap in organizing an investment confab.

Lancaster

Long after Independence, Sierra Leone continues to suckle from the breast of the Colonial step mother, which has always manifested mixed signals when it comes to assuring the people that they are committed in development. We all know, or at least right thinking individuals, both in Africa and in Europe know that Britain has gained more from Sierra Leone than the other way round.

Also, for Sierra Leoneans to go to England to discuss matters affecting the country back in Africa is not anything new. This symbiosis started with the Lancaster House summit in which the SLPP and the APC manifested their political interests rather than the needs of the country. Thus we saw how over political differences, our political leaders refused to lay aside their petty political squabbling for national interest.

Repeaters

History has a rather uncomfortable attitude of repeating itself, especially when it comes to Sierra Leone. This difference does not augur well for any development for the country. In more than forty years of independence, Sierra Leone has never brought forth a united front when it comes to issues affecting our common interest-the nation.

Even during the war, when a series of conferences and summits where held to find a solution to the conflict, foreigners had to do the work which Sierra Leones preferred to bicker and bring forth impossible obstacles to any peace overture.

Let us move off from the negative past and move on to the positive future. Let us not politicize our nation’s future and our children’s better tomorrow in our backwardness today.

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