“I’m a Candidate of Mixed Ethnic Background” – Mohamed Pateh-Bah
It is but a few steps to the November elections and the National Democratic Alliance party (NDA) is yet to select a presidential nominee to steer its mantle of leadership, even though many names have been in the pipeline. This week records the declaration ceremony of Mohamed Pateh-Bah for the hot seat. Sierra Express Media conducted an interview with Mr Pateh-Bah and chronicles his comments home:
Mr. Pateh-Bah you have just declared an intention to aspire for the presidential flag-bearer, ahead of the November 17, 2012 polls under the NDA Party, take us through how you came about to making this decision?
Pateh-Bah: The fact is that I formalized my membership with this party between six and eight weeks ago, but I have been associating with the NDA for over five years. I came into the party not with the expressed interest to vie for the position of flag-bearer at the time I walked in, but my findings since I came into the party led me into taking this final decision. I am not saying that the NDA is starving of human resources, but at that very high level, I have been used to running for the Mayor of this city. I ran as an independent candidate but this time after I have consulted members of my party and they felt that I could serve the party’s best interest by going for the flagbearership. So it is as a result of several consultations with people within the party who called on me to make this supreme sacrifice that I decided that okay I would take a shot at this and see where we can head, and I also believe that I have the capacity to move this party forward. I can bring on board more independent minded voters, because there is this age old accusation that the NDA is a Fullah party despite of the fact that I am a Fullah by tribe, but of a mixed background, I mean I have all the background one could think of, Fullah, Mende, Temne, you name them. I decided to take this challenge so that I can bring independent minded people into this party and dispel that image of the party being a Fullah party and make it a broad-based party.
Talking about bringing in independent minded voters do you believe in the politics of stronghold?
Yes I do. Parties have areas where they are considered as a stronghold, but I think that the NDA’s stronghold is the Republic of Sierra Leone. The NDA has portions of votes wide across this country, and we are in the APC and SLPP terrains. We are the party most capable of undermining the strength of these bigger political parties in areas they refer to as strongholds.
Already the contest is tight in this case because we see an incumbent presidential candidate in the person Ernest Koroma, bracing up to retain power in the forthcoming November 17 elections. Also the main opposition SLPP candidate is already preparing a 2012 sharp 12 bid to regain power. The NDA is found in this shot stop, what do you think you can do to create an impact in this all contest race?
There are many scenarios in this contest; we could win the elections, we could lose. Being a powerful force to dictate where power gravitates this time is not an easy game because every political party has got to strengthen up in terms of building the political awareness. We’ll have to come up with messages that are resonate with the people’s felt needs, things that are closer to their hearts, and I think those are things we would want to bring into the political realm. Having said this, I am not oblivious of the fact that there is a lot of ignorance in the society as well, some people have dug trenches and are not ready to move. But I can assure you that if you look at the demographic analysis of how elections have been held in this country most of the time, there is a large portion of the voters who do not vote, and these are independent minded voters who are in the middle and these parties have 35% while there is a huge block in the middle which keeps gravitating from time to time. On that note, I want to say as a group, we have to work on this and see how we can increase our stakes in the elections that come November 17.
Talking about improving the stakes in the forthcoming elections, already registrations are being carried out by NEC, and there is voter apathy considering the number of registrants; how many chances do you think you can sweep in with the NDA phraseology of nationwide support stronghold?
Well like I told you we going to have a message that can resonate with the common people, because we are a party of the common people, the SLPP is an elitist party, the APC started as a kind of grass root party but it has also gone over to be an elitist party where you have few people that have all the benefits of political governance. We are coming in the middle to represent the common people, the workers, the grass root people, the farmers; I am a farmer and I want to talk to the farmers on how they can carry on farming without selling out their huge portions of land or leasing them to foreign investors so that they stay on their pieces of land as slaves, virtual slaves who will be working for these foreign investors. I want a farming system that will accommodate the ordinary people so that if you come into my community and plant a hundred trees I know that each time we harvest the hundred trees, thirty of the trees are going to be left for the community; we want to go into those communities and educate them to see the difficult terrain that two political parties are leading us on, and see our common ground.
You are yet to have your delegates’ conference where the presidential nominee is going to emerge, how prepared is the party when elections are close at the door?
Well we have finally viewed on the first week after the breaking of fast and I think that date is sacrosanct. It is not going to change and if you see the difference while the NDA has abandoned other dates in the past, you will think that this is now cutting stone. Now you see people coming up to declare for office, to run for office, and you see that we the candidates are also going to move to make sure that there is no more postponement in the convention because we want to have time to reach out to our people.
How many candidates will vie in your forthcoming convention?
Well, principally I know about myself, but I heard that three other candidates are going to declare as I have done. You’ll have to monitor the press and see the next man to follow suit.
As an aspiring candidate, what is your take on NEC’s Le100 million nomination criteria for presidential aspirants?
You see my concern much more is not with the cost of the presidential nomination but for the parliamentary and that of the local council nominations. The NDA being the grassroots party over the time is known for its strategies which are to ensure that all people are provided equal accessibility to partake in the democratization process.
If we are going to pay 25milion Leones per candidate, and you are talking about 114 candidates, it is almost a bill of 3.1 billion you’re talking about, which is outside campaign expenses and we don’t have that amount of money. For the presidential ticket, it’s a one of such we could mobilize resources to pay and I think I have sufficient goodwill in society to raise that. As for parliamentary aspirants, I mean they are stifling the ordinary people if they should only come up with such amounts of money at a time closer to the elections. I think about the rural people if you are going to fix the rates at these. It is like putting the rural people in a disadvantageous position as opposed to people in the urban areas. Those who have been in power for years have been getting monies from all dimensions. Compare this to some of our contestants who are people just from the colleges, putting such prohibitive fees I think is to stifle their participation and I foresee this to be recipe for chaos.
Do you foresee the Marxist Theory in this case?
I am a student of history and politics and I have studied political development over the years, which means I know that one of the issues that brought chaos in Europe, Great Britain to be precise, was initially the criteria for property rights which qualifies one for political office. That was what happened in the middle ages. The common people then rose up against the system where the idea of establishing the House of Commons emerged.
Given this scenario I’m not indicting the rich class but I know that there is a huge population of politicians who get their monies through questionable means. In Sierra Leone good or hard work is not rewarded, but criminality is.
There are so many ordinary people who have brilliant ideas on how to run this nation successfully and I believe by denying such persons the right to equal representation, we are misplacing priority.
Are you saying the Marxist theory is in play here?
Well of course I am not a kind of somebody who accepts the masses to hold hook line and sinker eye, I have a socialist perception about things; I believe that there are certain things in society that ought to be run by the state. I believed in a welfare kind of system, I believe in a social democratic agenda in which things like education, health care, shelter for people, things that will dignify our people. Education wiping ignorance, homelessness, these things have to be eliminated or as long as they are not eliminated you can be sure that politicians can always ride the people to what they want. So I have a partial socialist mind. I have a firm belief in free market economy. I also believe that people should do business and create wealth because that is the surest way of moving the country forward as rapidly as possible.
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