I am at liberty to describe and discuss ENCISS from a descriptive perspective. This is because I am not at knowledge liberty to knowing exactly what it means and what they do. Watch my language; what it means and what they do! I am interfacing the entity (ENCISS) and those who drive home its messages.
We are probably knowledgeable in feigning understanding of its nomenclature in seeing them as a government-civil society inter-face British funded outfit. Like the Justice Sector project in Sierra Leone, ENCISS is well funded by the British tax payers. Any project that receives twenty five million pounds of critical and observant European society like Britain, is, to say the least, enviably lucrative.
As for their successes, don’t ask me. Discuss with their public officials.
Recently, news hit town that ENCISS and other groups (were serious SIERRA LEONEANS involved?), were seeking electoral process-change. But certainly enough, for change to be effected with local contents, it would have to involve local ‘zombies’. Don’t our local and international non-governmental organizations dig toilet pits and build bondo bushes for our people in the villages? In doing so, don’t they do needs assessments? In seeking funding, don’t they add up the people’s contributions as food for work? Even defending an undefendable democratic miss harp is local contribution.
In defending the projects, don’t they rely on aimless and jobless people (sometimes youths)? And lastly, don’t they need smoke-screen activists? And as one attendant asked, “don’t they need disgruntled and job hustling activists?”
And then we heard of a “national conference” at the bank complex in Freetown-west, to discuss I know not what. But we heard of resolutions none of which was to use women and assumed minority tribes; under the cover of “GENDER and minority groups” to pump home the message of the need to practice democracy of the few. That is my personal and avowed interpretation of their “proportional electoral/democracy” message.
In information management, when your channel is faulty, its messages will be fiercely suspicious and mortally attacked. Thus in the first place, ENCISS got it wrong with its channels of trumpet. In the second place, they missed the point by defacing government presence at their functions. The presence of the ministers and vice president of the republic of Sierra Leone did not satisfy them enough;
hence publications that the government snubbed their program. Publications one cannot possibly ascribe to ENCISS. If they had better image makers, they should have by now apologized to the government. And in the light of that, they must be very lucky to receive the cooperation of a government whose vice president’s presence at your program was deluded and insufficient for your participants, some of whom claimed to be journalists.
ENCISS would have done itself much good, if they had distanced themselves from these anti-publications-stating that government were their working partners and that they were happy with their representations; considering the fact that the program took place on a day the government had other serious things to discuss in cabinet. Thirdly, if your mouth piece and trumpet blowers are suspect to your hearers, you stand to loose your credibility to re-earn which, you may need the intervention of your funders.
To the topic specific; the rhetoric question is: what is the locus of the demand for a proportional representation system of voting in Sierra Leone, safe for the fact that both ENCISS and its whistle blowers have democratic rights to speak their minds. And indeed no one must attempt to take that right from them; much so when there is enough British fund to provide and sustain that liberty. But the British, beside intelligence service and information gathering (some of which might end no where or somewhere), do not fund unsustainable and unachievable wind-chasing programs such as this one. If the British want institutional change, they have the sincerity and strength to have such discussed first with the authorities.
Even though a few supposedly educated persons seem to be ready to convince Her Majesty’s government that the issues of youths carrying machetes aimed at opposing political parties in Sierra Leone do this because of the type of voting system we now have, they are disingenuously using the embers of women and minority groups to advocate means of their own entry into the nation’s political life, when no one, in the first place has driven them out. Count the minority tribes in the country today. Have a look at the cabinet, the women, the parliament, the civil service, the media and the business community. Which sector of these crying groups is not represented? Doesn’t the Political parties’ registration commission, PPRC, make it mandatory that 30% of every political party’s parliamentary list must contain women representation? Why not advocate for this to be raised to 80% if ENCISS, whistle blowers and their funders want excessive minority supremacy in our democratic dispensation? Have they put to serious studies and research on our experience with this experimentation in 1996 and 2002? Were the British, the Americans and Sierra Leonean voters foolish enough to have abandoned the same system, for the 2007 elections?
One would wish that ENCISS will move slowly fast but not allow to be used by people who have been hired to disrupt our democracy with the aim of entering the parlor politics, through the window machinations. If this electoral process can only be changed through a referendum as stipulated in our constitution, as we did in becoming a one-party state in 1978, this is a debate that cannot be sustained beyond Waterloo. It’s just for the fun of engaging the airwaves, and I cannot see it receiving any support from the Ernest Bai Koroma government, except with a threat that the British will not help fund our elections in 2012. Even that, it would and can certainly be circumvented. The British, for the satisfaction of their own ENCISS, cannot kill what they have made-the peace of Sierra Leone. So this ENCISS project must be taken back to the drawing board. Re-examine it within the light of players especially those the government might certainly be suspicious of. Some have asked for employment with this administration, while others have been frowned at because of their kindergarten and childish approach to national issues.
The system might see them as citizens in sheep’s clothing, metamorphosing to advance behind British funded programs. In African politics, loyalty is more sorted after, than expertise. This has been the political malaise of our continent. This issue is no exception. To introduce a change of this magnitude, ENCISS did not need to use political suspects and treat the state authority with frail levity. No government will take seriously, a suspicious and tribally heavy laden civil society that might hide behind available British funding agency. What ENCISS could do is to do a spot and quality check on partner operators. The revelations will be glaringly astonishing.
Anyway, small boys, they say, are young!
I await the ENCISS press release. Do send me a copy.
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