Titus ©️Boye-Thompson, London
Now that the Commissioner of the ECSL has announced the results for the Mayoral elections in Freetown, so many issues are raised up by the implications of the simple acceptance that the APC Candidate for Mayor, Yvonne Aki Sawyer was the winner at the polls. Some of the issues raised by this announcement touch not only in the dynamics of Freetown’s politics as we know it but also exposes the inimical flaws in the integrity of the Presidential results for which elections were conducted the very same day.
The cloud over the entire elections become more thunderous when you consider the wider implications of the allocations and distributions of seats across the Country for MPs between the contesting political parties which saw a lopsided Parliament thus created with a somewhat two thirds majority to the SLPP. Without any hesitation, the more discerning among us would see these results as a deliberate setting of the stage for some insidious legislation to come many of which would lay the ground for more time for Maada Bio and more political distension and disengagement of the people.
Back to the Western Area Urban and to some extent, the Freetown Rural votes, the campaign message that invariably targeted the Creoles as to be discounted for political participation was quashed and vehemently disreputed. The soundings of a Creole dominance as Mayor of Freetown to cover the Western Area and now the twin constituencies of Western Urban and Western Rural came out as an anti Creole rant. To anyone not of full grasp of Sierra Leonean history, the types of messaging that were put out created unwarranted tribal tensions.
The first thing that many allow to confuse them is the fact that those who are called Creoles in Freetown where they predominantly live are not members of a tribe, they can no longer lay claim to a tribe nor characterised by attributea of being in a tribe of Sierra Leone. For that matter, the narratives that seek out Creoles as a target for political participation or exclusion in comparison to other tribes in Sierra Leone is dysfunctional and erroneous. The Creoles are organised simply as a people with shared traditions and mores. Their commonality as descendants of freed slaves merely serve as a descriptive genre, it adorns them with no further gravitas as a people together, acting on the basis of tribal affinity. For that matter. It is easy for a Creole to have many affirmations with the different tribes in Sierra Leone and elsewhere in the West Coast of Africa where slaves were captured, put in ships to go abroad but then some freed to return here and many freed without even reaching slavery.
For those who do not understand the Creole story, I would draw attention to the current boat people who are presently crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. These people come from many different countries but where they are settled in any location and forced to live amongst themselves in that loxality, then in time to come, their children and grand children would evolve I to Creoles, with a common la guagw and a way of life conditioned by their environment. If, through time, they are given the legal right to exist in that country and obtain citizenship etc, then their participation in politics, especially in the politics of that area they have occupied and built up for themselves would be mandatory and they cannot be excluded in decision making that affects their lives simply because their ancestors came there by boat!
The simplicity of the Freetown vote is based on the age old relationships between the Creoles of Freetown and the people who inhabit that space with them. The Creoles have never been unmindful of their need to be lifted up educated and accorded a fair chance to live together as equals. For that matter, the Creoles integrated the people of Freetown through their language and culture. The much trumpeted religious tolerance enjoyed in Freetown and the melting pot mentality is a testimony of that communal spirit of peaceful co-existwnce. To the extent that over time, the people of the Western Area give credence to the Creoles and trust them to act in their best interest has come about not by law or constitution but by an open trust between the peoplea of this place. The same trust is what makes us inter marry and engage in each other’s traditions, cultures and ceremonies that reduces or otherwise eraces any hint of division amongst us. So when Gento came with a campaign of such disregard for our ways, the people of Freetown showed him the door.
The results announced by the ECSL denies the true report of the people’s disgust for Gento and his tribal and religious animosities. As she has already declared, the assertion that the gap between Mayor Aki Sawyer is much wider than announced by Konneh shows the attempts that were made to deny the people their rightful choice for Freetown.
As for the APC campaign, the time to engage on a post mortem is yet to come but it is anticipated that the Party takes the right decisions on a way forward. The figures for Western Area Rural and Western Area Urban should be a test bed for reflection and to indict the leadership and stakeholders in the days to come.
