Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Nation-Building in an African State: The 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Sierra Leone

Dumbuya, Peter, Journal of Third World Studies

INTRODUCTION

Every general election since Sierra Leone became independent of Britain in April 1961 has either been preceded by or held in the aftermath of a major political controversy or some other crisis that significantly altered the nation's political landscape. The promise of free and fair elections at independence dissipated within a few short years, beginning in 1967 when the military intervened to stop the transfer of political power from Prime Minister Albert M. Margai of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) to the leader of the opposition All People's Congress (APC), Siaka P. Stevens. Pre-civil war general elections (1967-86) ended Sierra Leone's fragile parliamentary system of government and was replaced by one-party rule with an imperial presidency. Sharp economic declines, political violence, electoral fraud, and corruption distorted the electoral process. This state of affairs culminated in a brutal civil war (1991-2002), precipitated by Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in an attempt to overthrow President Joseph S. Momoh's APC government. The multiparty Constitution of 1991 ended one-party rule but remained in abeyance as the civil war ground on.

The general elections of 1996, held in the midst of the civil war, resulted in the transfer of power from the military junta that overthrew Momoh's government in April 1992, the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), to a civilian government led by Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. The 2002 presidential and parliamentary elections consolidated the shaky peace process and ramped up the political gains Kabbah and the SLPP had made in 1996. The August/September 2007 general elections were the first to be held since the departure of UN peacekeepers (in 2005), deployed to the country at the height of the civil war in 1998. These relatively peaceful and transparent elections resulted in the defeat of the incumbent vice president and the return to power of the APC after a fifteen-year hiatus. The elections also formed pan of the continuum of post-conflict reconstruction, stabilization, and nation-building that began in 1996. One election observer group hailed them as "landmark elections" not only because they effected a civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in contrast to the aborted transfer of power in 1967, but also because they "provided an opportunity to test the ability of Sierra Leone to live peacefully within a system of electoral politics premised on respect for human rights. peace, stability and competitive party politics." (1)

Nevertheless, competitive party politics have not yet produced the hoped-for economic recovery that is often the basis of domestic tranquility. The government continues to depend on external funding to overcome mounting poverty, unemployment, and a lack of basic services. (2) In the 2009 Human Development Report, published by the UN Development Program, Sierra Leone ranked 180th among 182 countries (ahead of Afghanistan and Niger) in the human development index. (3) its "weak state" status has led the U.S. Department of State to classify it as a "rebuilding country," meaning one currently emerging from and rebuilding after an internal conflict. (4) Washington's perception that weak states often pose a national security threat became more pronounced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; it responded to the challenge by supporting electoral reforms in Sierra Leone and other countries experiencing internal conflicts. (5)

This paper critically examines the 2007 parliamentary and presidential elections in Sierra Leone as a model of competitive multiparty politics in a post-conflict state. Governmental legitimacy that gives rulers the right to act on behalf of their citizens derives in part from elections which are the preferred means of electing political leaders. But as the post-independence period has shown, elections became exercises in political futility as more states adopted single-party systems that outlawed opposition parties. Ideally, governments are elected and imbued with the right to act on behalf of their citizens, but the creation of so-called "monopoly states" whose leaders imposed repressive authoritarian one-party systems on their citizens has eroded their appeal. This postcolonial one-party state in effect emerged as the sole viable mechanism through which African leaders gained and maintained power. (6)

Elections in Nigeria, Kenya, and Zimbabwe do serve as examples of what can go wrong in electoral processes that are not properly monitored and supervised by both domestic and external stakeholders even when the proper electoral framework exists. There, massive electoral fraud and violence kept incumbent governments in power. Nigeria's April 2007 presidential and legislative elections were so chaotic, violent, and fraudulent that one critic charged Africa's most populous country with leading "Africa's Crisis of Democracy." (7) Another commentator described the elections as "deeply flawed" because "It was unclear until just days before each election-for state offices on April 14 and for the presidency and the National Assembly on April 21--who the final candidates would be." (8)

In Sierra Leone, the necessary electoral framework, comprising the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC), did exist to safeguard the electoral process from fraud, violence, and political manipulation. But I argue that upstream intervention by a combination of internal and external stakeholders helped the country overcome its postwar electoral challenges, and thus avoided election-related violence that made people "more disillusioned with the way democracy is practiced" in Nigeria, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, among other states. (9) Upstream intervention means the insertion of internal and external stakeholders into the electoral process early on to prevent or forestall widespread electoral manipulation, fraud, and violence. Nevertheless, much as post-conflict legislation, institutions, and policies were aimed at inculcating a sense of electoral nationalism, the outcome of the 2007 general elections reflected deep- seated, ethno-regional patterns of voting that are creatures of earlier efforts by politicians to politicize ethnic identities for political and electoral gain. Voting was based not so much on the pressing, substantive issues of the day but on ethno-regional …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Stabilization, and Nation-Building in an African State: The 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Sierra Leone. Contributors: Dumbuya, Peter - Author. Journal title: Journal of Third World Studies. Volume: 28. Issue: 2 Publication date: Fall 2011. Page number: 143+. © Association of Third World Studies, Inc. Fall 2008. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.