The crushing phobia of dissent and the alternative voice: the new strategic dilemma of the APC leadership cauldron

By: Ibrahim Jalloh - (Jallomy)

Civic Educator, Political Analyst and Development Consultant

For a considerable number of years to come, the exchange of the batton of national leadership will be an exchange between the ruling SLPP and the roaring opposition APC. To flavour the soup of democracy, generational emergence of a Third Political Force will happen from time to time but the enduring spirit of political sustainability has always been thin and waned. Demonstratively, PDP Sorbeh sprouted and dramatically fragmented; PMDC formed, stormed the political waves but in the end, all is a mute phenomenon; finally, NGC emerged, unsettled presumptive leaders but ended a stillbirth!

Historic political errors have always been in the centre of the demise of the giant political parties.  SLPP and APC share few things in common but differ a lot on many many things. One poignant variance is that SLPP ingrained her leadership in the corridors of intellectualism; on the flip side, APC celebrates anchorage on mediocrity and simplicity in the leadership corridors. 

But the comparison stops at this point where SLPP prides on and hold value for the voice of dissent and alternative political pathways. APC is religiously anachronistic and heavily  obsessed with the old ways of doing things, the business - as - usual syndrome. For the APC change is politically suicidal and the incredible urge and push to maintain the status quo are stable characteristic features.

21st Century politics cannot find space to accomodate the overriding philosophy of leadership of the APC. The structure and composition of the current leadership of APC are monolithical and fashioned along the lines of the communist temptation to think and prescribe the political mindset and conduct of the people. Undeniably, this is repressive servitude and a classic denial of the ingenuity to think and act on the basis of prevailing circumstances and the individual's outlook.

The APC lost the electoral judgement of 2018. Conventional political wisdom dictates that in such circumstances, the urge should shift to a reengagement and recalibration of the entire process leading to the fall. It never happened but what happened were a set of actions that can be neatly described as political denial, resistance to democratic change, disengagement from the processes of state governance and the incredible urge to secure political capital from real or imaginary national crises.

But all are judgemental political errors committed by the leadership of this great party. A distasteful culture of political ownership developed early and leaders of the APC were tempted and settled for a conversion of the collective ownership of the party to an individual entity and hence the creation of political sole proprietorship.

Membership of the APC party is tumultuous and massively teeming but ownership of the party is in the hands of a few people that constitute the leadership.

Those individual members of the APC that think and advocate change and loudly call for cooperative governance are subjected to perilous rejection. Sadly, the leadership of the APC has lost the appetite for the truth. 

Based on her socialist lineage, the APC is massively grassroot. Regrettably, the power to decide and effect those decisions for the common good of the party is highjacked. Ridiculously, the membership of the APC party is held hostage and, for want of a better word, in bondage.

Dissenting views and the nurturing of alternative positions are vital ingredients of internal democracy within political parties. However, these are not only strange but repulsive ingredients in the APC. 

The APC party is suffering from massive elitist political exodus on an unimaginable scale and magnitude. Hon. Alpha Khan is hounded out for his early understanding and position on the current political realities. 

He simply called for participation in the governance processes of the state. He was the brain and schemer of the 2007 electoral victory of APC. Comrade Victor Bockarie Foe was subjected to calculated insults and defame for reasoning out and withdrawing from active politics and being bold and courageous to point at certain anomalies in the APC party. Recently, Hon. Sylvia Blyden has been declared a prodigal "daughter" for stating the illegality of the current executive of the APC and for supporting a court action she thought necessary. The list goes on. But all of these happenings cannot provide APC an early return to power.

When a generation of leaders lost the appetite for the truth and became derisive of dissenting views and alternative voices, the political grave is ready. 

We hate seeing in operation disoriented and fragmented opposition parties but one is here in Sierra Leone. The worrying thing is a political field day has been granted to the ruling party. The consoling thing is the abundant political magnanimity of the president of the country, Rtd. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio. He could have easily become a dictator under the current circumstance because the main opposition APC is not in opposition but in fragmentation and the endless search for political capital.