President Ernest Koroma: the dawn of a new era and visionary leadership in Sierra Leone

I believe that having vision is an important part of being an effective leader. It is not possible to be a leader and not know what your goal is or what the future plans are for the country. Sharing your leadership vision helps your vision grow and your leadership develop. As you tell your leadership vision to others, you will strengthen your own belief in your vision and strengthen your determination to make your leadership vision become a reality. Such visionary leadership can be attributed to President Koroma’s stance in resuscitating the Sierra Leone economy through numerous endeavors he has undertaken to bring to reality what he promised the people of Sierra Leone when elected in 2007. (Photo: Joseph S. Sherman)

The challenges for Sierra Leone in the next decade, like all other countries world over, are at the threshold of next millennium. We have challenges to face as we prepare ourselves to step out of the ugly governance of the past. Let us briefly explore some of these challenges.

The opposition SLPP political system has lost its credibility. Rampant corruption and misuse of power has created an ugly image of politics among the younger generation and they prefer to totally detach from politics. This is not a desirable tendency for the future of the nation. We need talents in future politics of our country. It is a great challenge to cleanse politics of corruption and restructure it for the next millennium.

Preserving unity among the opposition is indeed a difficult task, especially when we consider the influx of selfish, individualistic approach in our societies. The nation is built up on the value system of its people. The problems we have now – regionalism, growing apathy among the main opposition, are a direct or indirect reflection of the erosion of our basic value system. Rebuilding this should start from each one of us, from our families, from our homes. It will then spread to the societies that we live in and will eventually keep on strengthening the nation. Ironically we all keep on lamenting about the pathetic situation of Sierra Leone without doing anything constructive to resolve it.

The next decade should experience unimaginable technological advancement. Nations all over the world are striving hard to keep pace with this. In Sierra Leone we face a Herculean task to prepare ourselves to meet this challenge. The basic ingredients required are proper education for all our citizens and opportunities to flourish. Education should not be just for the sake of degrees or diplomas. People need to be educated so that they expand their horizon of knowledge, wisdom, attitudes and become real human beings of superior qualities. Considering our present literacy rate, this indeed is a great challenge for the next decade. Providing education is not enough; we need to create enough opportunities for our people to use their talents.

The easiest way to destroy a country is, perhaps, to destroy its culture. With the advancement of mass media, the erosion of our cultural heritage is also speeded up. Many western countries, after realizing the evils of the so called ‘modern free society’ are slowly going back to their original cultural ethics. Whereas, we in Sierra Leone, are on the verge of breaking it through negative propaganda of the status quo by the opposition SLPP. In the next decade, as the world gets smaller and smaller through the use of the media, it is a great challenge to preserve our cultural ethics.

There are no easy solutions to any of these challenges we have to face. We, the younger generation, cannot remain aloof and let things happen just like that. We need to wake up and seek ways and means to live up to the challenges. Indeed, we shape the future – whether it is good or bad depends a lot on us.

Today President Koroma is taking a major step in that direction by pledging to restore Sierra Leone to its rightful place in the committee of nations. Every country needs a leader with a clear understanding of the issues facing their country and is prepared to implement them while maintaining operational functions, developing employee skills, and fighting corruption. Politics as an activity is not disappearing. It is changing. In some circumstances and contexts the capacity of the state and the success of politics are more effective than in others. Partisan politics as practiced by the opposition SLPP is not helping Sierra Leone to overcome the problems in the country in spite of the efforts President Koroma is exerting but it is in fact sowing a seed of discord to take us backwards. The Politicians of the SLPP are faced with adverse domestic problems which they are unable to solve. Instead of engaging in constructive politics they are rather involved in destructive and unwarranted criticism.

Furthermore, the state of the economy in Sierra Leone should not be measured by cynics through measurement of perception, or subjective economy, rather it should be measured by actual economy inherited from the former government. In other words, the perception political opponents have of the economy are shaped by statement relating to the media rather than grounded on judgment related to the past.

In addition to the performance of President Koroma in a shattered and battered economy he inherited from the SLPP, the presence of political cynicism can undermine economic performance in the evaluation of confidence because governments perceived impotent have a low probability of being judged according to their performance.

It is time for political opponents and pundits to strip the camouflage of scapegoating President Koroma for the present downward trend of the economy in Sierra Leone. It is time to stop pretending that the poverty and hardship the people of Sierra Leone are going through is the machination and invention of President Koroma. Rather, it is time for meaningful and patriotic Sierra Leoneans to pose a true alternative to the dangerous false populism of pessimistic opponents.

by Joseph S. Sherman, Washington, DC

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