Five things to consider in Sierra Leone's House of Cards

Elections in Sierra Leone will not change the circumstances that have led to war in the country – and already marginalized citizens stand to lose. The greatest concern is not the election, but the deep-seated patronage networks that govern the country.

A new president, parliamentarians and local council representatives are about to be elected in Sierra Leone. The current president, Ernest Bai Koroma, leader of the All People’s Congress (APC) has served the constitutional limit of two five-year terms. Koroma will therefore be replaced by his chosen successor, Samura Kamara, who will run against Brigadier (Rtd.) Julius Maada Bio, leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and Kandeh Yumkella of the newly established National Grand Coalition (NGC). The APC and SLPP have dominated politics in Sierra Leone since independence in April 1961.

Preparations are taking place in a historical system of resource distribution built around a neo-patrimonial logic that ensures a fundamental imbalance between rich and poor. A large number of youth therefore consider their future prospects to be bleak, and constitute a security threat in the short to medium term.

A looming economic crisis
In 2013 and early 2014, there was considerable optimism among Sierra Leone’s leadership. The discovery of iron ore, combined with seemingly insatiable Chinese investments in real estate, meant that the country had one of the world’s fastest growing economies in 2013, with growth rates of 20.1 percent. At the height of this optimism, two shocks occurred: the Ebola epidemic and the collapse of iron ore prices. The country’s economic growth dipped to 4.6 percent in 2014 and -21.1 percent in 2015.

Despite these heavy blows to Sierra Leone’s economy, economic growth resumed in the last quarter of 2015, and remains on an upward trend (app. 4.3 percent), due to new investments in mining, agriculture and fisheries. This growth should continue in the medium term.

However, the Sierra Leonean economy remains under pressure. Inflation is considerable, with direct implications for living standards of ordinary Sierra Leoneans; including among the social group that initially organized a rebellion against the Sierra Leonean government in the 1990s: young well-educated men. Furthermore, the IMF pressured the government to stop subsidizing fuel in November 2016. The price rose 62.5 percent, from Le 3,750 to Le 6,000 per liter (app. USD 0,78). Again, this impacts the poor and vulnerable directly, as both food and non-food expenditures at household level increase as a consequence.

The uncertainty of Sierra Leone’s economic future has the potential to destabilize the country – just as it did in the late 1980s before war broke out.

Corruption
Corruption at the highest level of government is a concern, and there are rumors that the government is increasingly unable to pay the salaries of civil servants. In an interview from early 2017, a close observer of Sierra Leonean affairs noted: ‘Now that ebola is gone, we are facing the reality. In 2007 when the APC won elections, people were optimistic. But everything was a balloon, and the dipping in the price of iron ore – not ebola – caused the problem. We were ‘lucky’ that ebola came, because it made a huge influx of money and took off the pressure for a while.’

People might expect services of the state to be for everyone. However, according to a neo-patrimonial logic, public services of Sierre Leone only benefit people of a particular camp, in this case the ruling party (the APC). The APC belongs primarily to northern tribes such as the Temne, Limba and Koranko, while the southern tribes, mainly the Mende, traditionally vote for, and is catered to by the SLPP.

Historical precedence
The challenges that the government experiences are not caused by a technical inability of state institutions to provide public services. Their difficulties stem from the system of neo-patrimonial resource distribution. It was the failure of the leadership in Freetown to maintain a neo-patrimonial network – established and consolidated during the post-colonial era – that is partly to blame for the onset of conflict in the early 1990s.

Sierra Leone is often referred to as a ‘patrimonial state’ where national resources are re-distributed as markers of personal favor. This system was in a double crisis in Africa in the mid-1990s. The price of raw materials was in free-fall and the termination of the Cold War caused aid money to dry up. Young people marginalized from networks of patrimony therefore became an important source to tap into by those rising against the government in Freetown.

Peacebuilding and development efforts after 2002 have shown that neo-patrimonial governance structures have persisted, also within institutions supported by international funding.

It looks like an APC win
The reflections above are an important backdrop to understanding that contemporary politics in Sierra Leone are all about gaining access to resources through networks of patronage.

In this context, there are several reasons why the APC is likely to emerge as the winner of the general elections. An important one is fragmentation within the opposition, the SLPP specifically. The new party, NGC, emerged in the summer of 2017 after a power struggle within the SLPP. The SLPP’s only chance of regaining power is by pursuing the ‘Gambian model’, forming a coalition among opposition parties, including the NGC, and APC defectors to ensure some buy-in from the north.

The NGC has made inroads into areas in the north that are considered APC strongholds. It has courted the urban youth, and proposed a ‘third way’ at a time when the two traditional parties – the APC and SLPP – appear weak.

NGC’s ‘third way’ is an attempted break with the SLPP’s and APC’s alignment with tribes of the south and north, respectively. The SLPP’s presidential candidate won less than 10 percent of the vote in four northern districts in the 2012 elections. Ethnicity and geography matter in Sierra Leone. The importance of regional and tribal affiliation has made the registration of 3.1 million voters in 2017 a potential concern. Sierra Leone’s northern regions maintained a lead in the process, with 32 percent, followed by the Western Area with 28 percent, and the southern and eastern regions with 20 percent each. Knowing the APC’s inclination to manipulate state institutions and resources in their favor raises concerns about this process.

The APC has prepared the ground for a win in March by establishing and consolidating institutional and administrative changes in support of their patronage networks. President Koroma and the APC have put considerable efforts and resources into establishing a party organization. In addition, the government (APC) redrew administrative boundaries, mostly in APC strongholds in the north. Two new districts were established, and 41 chiefdoms were split up. As a push for decentralization, the government claimed that the redrawing of administrative borders was an attempt to bring governance closer to the people. Both initiatives are criticized as ploys to strengthen the APC’s patronage network at the local level.

Election security
During the elections in 2012, security planning was shaped and driven by Sierra Leonean institutions for the first time, building on experiences from the two national elections held since the end of the war in 2002 with international support. In 2011, the Sierra Leone Police’s capacity to secure elections was assessed as poor. However, there was no attempt to overrule or fundamentally undermine the national security architecture and the police, while under pressure, was prepared.

The police is technically able to organize peaceful elections, but there are concerns about their political neutrality. Politicization of state institutions, including the police, has been considerable during Koroma’s tenure. No candidate in post-conflict Sierra Leone has fully trusted the formal security forces, especially during the elections. This has meant that politicians have remobilized ex-combatants from the war and other marginalized youth into their campaigns for security.

In 2007, for instance, Koroma’s election security team – comprised of 14 known ex-combatants – was brought in to be his bodyguards as president. The Sierra Leone Police (SLP) was subsequently used to legitimize their transition from informal security providers for Koroma to formal members of the Close Protection Unit of the SLP’s Operational Support Division.

In sum, APC stands to win in March, but it will happen in a context of economic instability. Those who are already marginalized stand to lose, which may lead to violence, indeed conflict. It has in the past. The greatest concern is not the election, but the deep-seated patronage networks that govern Sierra Leone.