{"id":51552,"date":"2012-12-28T17:59:29","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T17:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=51552"},"modified":"2012-12-28T17:59:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T17:59:29","slug":"instead-of-crying-wolf-slpp-needs-a-serious-soul-searching-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=51552","title":{"rendered":"Instead of Crying \u201cWolf,\u201d SLPP Needs a Serious Soul Searching Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The leadership of the Sierra Leone Peoples\u2019 Party (SLPP) should stop crying foul, but rather blame themselves for the party\u2019s defeat in the last month (November 17, 2012) general election. Both the party slogan \u201cSHARP 12\u201d and the manifesto \u201cNEW DIRECTION\u201d were faulty and unmarketable.\u00a0 Sharp 12, then what\u2026..? Polls do not open or close at 12am\/pm, and certainly publication of election results in Sierra Leone is not time bound. The word \u201cNEW DIRECTION\u201d can be interpreted differently by different people. However, most Sierra Leoneans regarded it as Julius Maada Bio\u2019s intention to abandon or replace all Ernest Koroma\u2019s ongoing projects, and in a country littered with unfinished and abandoned infrastructural projects, such actions could mean another waste of resources . (Photo<\/em>:\u00a0Steven Morie Samuels, USA, author)<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Sierra Leone Peoples\u2019 Party (SLPP), the Grand Old Party (GOP) continues to show a naivety to the politics of Sierra Leone and yet they cry foul. This supports the popular sayings that, \u00a0\u201cThe age of Methuselah has nothing to do with the wisdom of King Solomon\u201d \u00a0Most people would think that the GOP \u2013 first political party that brought independence to Sierra Leone \u2013 \u00a0should be the first to know, it\u2019s time to change strategy in Sierra Leone\u2019s politics. Instead of moving to the center, SLPP continues to move to the far \u201cright,\u201d reducing the party to merely a southeastern political party. \u00a0This has given All People\u2019s Congress (APC) the opportunity to move to the center and integrate areas, tribes and groups isolated by such primeval political ideology.<\/p>\n

SLPP leadership lacks strategic planning, and there was no surprise at their defeat. As a matter of fact, the party lost the 2012 election on the night of 31 July 2011, when Julius Maada Bio won the nomination to become the SLPP’s 2012 presidential candidate at the SLPP convention held at the Youyi Building in the heart of Freetown. \u00a0The elite in the party influenced the selection of a presidential candidate who \u201cwas no match for Ernest Koroma.\u201d They led the party faithful to believe that Maada Bio\u2019s only challenge to the State House was to defeat Usman Boie Kamara for the nomination, because he is handsome, young, and former Head of States during the NPRC regime. As if such na\u00efve thinking wasn\u2019t enough to get the party into trouble with the electorates, they allowed the entire 2012 campaign to be hijacked by \u201cpolitical fanatics\u201d who provided no room for opposing view(s). They were inexperienced, over-used and desperate with little or no clue about how fast the political landscape in the country is changing.<\/p>\n

SLPP was also financed by \u201ctight-fisted\u201d financial contributors and professors in the Diaspora. Many of these contributors were statistical probabilities experts when it comes to political contribution \u2013 they consider all political contributions as a personal investment \u2013 and knowing the probability of regaining the State House was ZERO, they reneged on their financial pledges, but choose to support Bio\/ SLPP with long and boring articles that had no impact on the election results.<\/p>\n

The SLPP electoral machine did not possess the firepower to outdo the APC \u201cbattle tested political campaign\u201d machine from the 2007 elections. \u00a0While SLPP campaign strategists were preparing for a \u201crun-off\u201d and referring to Koroma\u2019s \u00a0\u201cNO RUN-OFF and 4,4,4\u201d slogan as a mere illusion, APC strategists were mapping out a victory strategy to include Kailahun, Kenema and to put up a fierce fight in all SLPP traditional strongholds, while protecting their North and West strong holds.<\/p>\n

After two successive losses (2007 and 2012), SLPP should be informed that the party is becoming less competitive, a clear indication that the party leadership had lost touch with the political environment. The SLPP party needs a major shake-up at the leadership level to regain control. The fact that President Ernest Bai Koroma carried a huge \u201cbaggage\u201d associated with incumbency into the elections, and yet managed to win 58% of the votes to avoid a run-off is enough grounds to tell SLPP that all is not well. It\u2019s also enough to tell primitive political strategists, that no political party candidate can win the State House by merely appealing to its own support base. Therefore, SLPP must start looking at how they relate to constituency that do not belong to their political tradition.<\/p>\n

Steven Morie Samuels, MBA., MHA, Missouri \u2013 USA<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The leadership of the Sierra Leone Peoples\u2019 Party (SLPP) should stop crying foul, but rather blame themselves for the party\u2019s defeat in the last month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[692,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}