CIAO DATE: 08/2008
July 2008
Sierra Leone has made much progress since the civil war ended in 2002, but a number of social and economic time bombs must still be defused if an enduring peace is to be built. The 2007 elections, in which Ernest Bai Koroma won the presidency and his All People's Congress (APC) wrested the parliament from the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), restored legitimacy to the electoral process. Koroma's reform agenda promises much but must overcome big challenges. The majority of the population lives in abject poverty, and an ever-growing army of unemployed, socially alienated youth is a perennial threat to security. Patronage networks and identity politics, though evolving, continue to constrain government decisions. The new government faces a fundamental political challenge in building public confidence in its agenda, while donor support to post-war reconstruction is gradually scaled down. It needs to do more than call for "attitudinal change" and a renewed "social contract" if it is to improve accountability and combat corruption. The UN Peacebuilding Commission can make a major contribution.
Voting patterns in the recent elections show that the APC's reform message was well received in urban areas, where both increasing individualism and interest in voluntary association are beginning to replace the old system of extended families and elite patronage networks. At the same time, continued improvements in security and struggles for access to development resources have also resulted in a resurgence of identity politics. This is visible in the return of the old divide between the northern-aligned APC and southern-aligned SLPP, as well as at a sub-regional level, in the concentration of electoral support for the breakaway People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) party in the country's second largest city, Bo, and southern coastal areas.
The new president has exacerbated regional political rivalries by dismissing numerous functionaries appointed by the previous administration and replacing them with APC-supporting northerners. Returnees from the sizeable overseas diaspora, a major source of election campaign money, have contributed to the pressure on him to reward party faithful with government jobs. Koroma nevertheless has sought to fulfil his promise to run government "like a business concern". He has streamlined the ministerial system, put civil service reform back on the political agenda and required ministers to sign performance contracts whose targets they must meet to keep their jobs.
Resource link: Sierra Leone: A New Era of Reform? [PDF] - 1.2M