'Concerns' remain over Sierra Leone's 'election process & wider space for criticism of government'
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Transcript
00:00 Let's cross to Ottawa.
00:01 Jamie Hitchen is research fellow at the University of Birmingham.
00:04 Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:08 Thank you for having me.
00:09 Does the government story that it was a coup attempt hold up?
00:15 Well, I think it's still quite early in this to say definitively that that is indeed the
00:22 reality.
00:23 I mean, investigations are still ongoing.
00:27 The government has obviously moved on from its initial description of the incident as
00:32 a security breach to now describing it as a failed attempted coup.
00:37 And they've released the names and pictures of individuals that they want to ascertain
00:43 the location of in order to investigate this more thoroughly.
00:47 I think, you know, we have seen the government in the past, in the last year, for example,
00:52 in response to protests in August 2022, describing events there as an insurrection against the
00:57 state.
00:58 We haven't yet seen much evidence in support of that.
01:03 So I think it's still early to say, but it's certainly something we are needing to follow
01:10 up with.
01:11 And it'll be worth keeping an eye on to see how the investigations proceed.
01:16 Jamie, when you heard the news over the weekend, were you surprised?
01:19 It's been two decades since there was a civil war in Sierra Leone.
01:26 Yes, there were irregularities pointed out during the August presidential elections.
01:32 But was this a surprise, the fact that you had what may be a mutiny, what may be a coup
01:38 attempt?
01:41 I think, yes, probably it was a bit of a surprise.
01:45 We have seen there were some arrests made in July and August by the government accusing
01:53 a number of individuals.
01:54 I think 17 in total were arrested for a potential planning of a coup.
02:00 Now there was little follow up and evidence that has been presented to show evidence that
02:04 that was indeed the case.
02:06 But I think it's, you know, there are clear frustrations around the June election process.
02:14 Some of those which continue to exist and the economic challenges that Sierra Leone
02:18 continues to face have perhaps been some of the drivers behind this.
02:24 But I still think that it is perhaps a surprise the level at which the kind of, the severity
02:32 of the incident that we saw on Sunday that took place.
02:37 Before Sierra Leone descended into civil war, it was almost kind of a two party system that
02:43 you had in the country.
02:46 It seemed to have kind of gone back to that to a degree.
02:51 Who are the forces at play right now in running Sierra Leone?
02:55 Yes, so Sierra Leone is very much a two party state.
03:01 The individuals, I mean, the two main parties are the ones that hold all the seats in the
03:08 parliament, the Sierra Leone People's Party, which is the current ruling party, which has
03:11 been in power since 2018, and the All People's Congress that was in power for the previous
03:16 decade from 2007, 2018.
03:20 Smaller parties have emerged, but largely have tended to be reabsorbed into those larger
03:25 parties as in between election periods.
03:28 So those parties have kind of continued to dominate and we've seen a very much a kind
03:33 of strengthening of that two party system in the last election.
03:39 And those parties do have their strong kind of ethno-regional bases, which continue to
03:45 drive apparent voting patterns.
03:49 Drive of voting patterns.
03:50 And where do you situate in all of this the current president, Julius Maddabio, since
03:54 after all, in a different life, he was a coup leader.
03:58 Yeah, of course.
04:00 I mean, that's how Maddabio first became leader of Sierra Leone, albeit briefly in the 1990s.
04:08 So you know, his election this year has obviously been contested by the opposition.
04:14 They decided to, rather than challenge the results in court, and the results, I should
04:19 say, were also kind of queried by prominent international election observation missions
04:24 as well.
04:25 But the response of the opposition was, rather than to challenge the outcomes in the courts,
04:30 which they believed would not render a fair outcome.
04:34 They chose instead to pursue a boycott of the legislative and local council seats that
04:42 they were able to win.
04:44 But that boycott came to an end in October with an agreement that was struck between
04:50 the SLPP and the APC for a return, for the APC to return in exchange for a couple of
04:57 concessions, including those around the release of political prisoners, the removal of corruption
05:05 cases against the APC, which may or may not be deemed politically motivated, and also
05:10 this electoral reform committee, which is now being introduced by the president, which
05:16 will cut across both parties.
05:18 So those were some of the kind of conciliatory measures that the two main party leaderships
05:24 agreed to in October.
05:25 But whether or not some of the rank and file or the grassroots supporters of the opposition
05:32 were happy with that deal is perhaps something that kind of was behind some of the recent
05:39 actions that we've seen in pre-term.
05:41 One final question for you, Jamie Hitchen.
05:42 We have, if you look at the neighbors of Sierra Leone, on the one side Guinea, where it's
05:47 run by a coup leader now, on the other side Liberia, where the outgoing president has
05:52 just conceded defeat in his re-election bid.
05:57 How would you say Sierra Leone's democracy is doing?
06:00 Yeah, it very much is in between two extremes, if you like.
06:06 I think what's happened in Liberia is an example of what is possible for Sierra Leone's trajectory,
06:13 equally what has prevailed in Guinea may also be an example.
06:17 I think there are some legitimate concerns about the available space for criticism in
06:24 Sierra Leone.
06:25 The civic space seems to have shrunk in the last few years.
06:29 That's not to say that I think that attitudes among citizens towards democracy are still
06:33 very positive.
06:34 There was a strong turnout around the election in 2023.
06:39 I think the concerns about the validity of the process, the election process, and the
06:45 wider space for criticism of the government need to be addressed if Sierra Leone's to
06:49 kind of follow Liberia's more positive democratic direction in the next two to three years.
06:56 Jamie Hitchen, many thanks for joining us from Ottawa.
07:00 Thank you.
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