By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah
The following essay was first published in May 2013.
The police arrest and detention of opposition politician and leader of the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), Charles Francis Margai has raised a huge red flag against presidential use of police power in Sierra Leone. The events that preceded Charles Margai’s arrest and the overall conduct of officers of the police force in dealing with the situation raises a number of questions.
Foremost among these were the issues of law, constitutionality, and equal treatment of all citizens by institutions of the state.
Margai was held on the night of 10th May 2013 for statements he allegedly made at a press conference in his Chambers a week earlier. During the said press conference, Margai expressed frustration over the failure of President Koroma to amicably settle a land dispute between himself and the first lady, Sia Nyama Koroma. Margai had alleged that the president was allowing his wife to use the service of the Sierra Leone police to deny him possession of his property, a piece of land situated at Cape Road in Aberdeen. He reported that personnel of the Operational Support Division (OSD), who were acting under the instructions of the president’s wife, had gone to the said land and brutalized the caretaker and beaten-up his driver.
Margai squarely blamed the president for this act of intimidation and lawlessness because, according to him, Koroma failed to intervene despite a letter and personal visit he made to the president in relation to the issue. Police believed that Margai’s statement bordered on a security concern. He was held on Friday night for what the police say constituted an act of “subversion.” In particular, the police singled out the only sentence allegedly made by Margai: that he has 20,000 Kamajors, a civil defense force in the 1990s, at his command to defend him and his property should the need arise. That was the only sentence the police held on to build their case for arresting Margai.
This development engineered a huge debate across the country and beyond. As usual, the APC propagandists were the first to comment on the issue. They argued that Margai was arrested because of security concerns from the public. A pro-APC newspaper claimed that a particular youth group felt threatened by the utterances of Margai and called on the police to arrest him. Some members of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), on the other hand, say Margai built the monster that consumed him. In fact, an article on the Unity Newspaper of Monday May 13, 2013, stated that the APC showed Margai its true color. Ordinary people themselves were not left out on the debate. They also argued variedly on the issue.
But one fundamental aspect was left out in the whole debate: the circumstances that generated the supposedly vexed statement by Charles Margai for which he was arrested. What were the events that preceded the arrest? Or the circumstances that generated the pronouncement of the sentence that was singled out by the police? Were the police in violation of due process when they carried out the arrest of Margai? And what were the general implications of Margai’s arrest and detention on the assumed democratic credentials of President Koroma?
The answers to these questions will help us to not only situate the contradiction into its proper perspective, but it will allow us to offer an understanding of the fundamental problems surrounding the nature of democracy and governance culture in the country. Charles Margai’s arrest and detention offered the country an opportunity to examine the level of independence of the national democratic institutions. Are these institutions particularly functioning to protect the fundamental rights of citizens in accordance with the principles of the rule of law? Or are they being systematically used by ruling party officials to harass and intimidate opposition politicians and supporters? The controversy surrounding Charles Margai borders on a question of national democratic rights and individual liber- ties. It has little to do with the so-called national security that was talked about by the police and APC propagandists.
Charles Margai’s arrest put into question the citizens’ equal access to justice and their fair treatment and protection by the state. Far from the arguments by APC propagandists that Margai’s arrest was in the interest of national security, the issue itself exposed the level of state repression and injustice against opposition politicians. Behind the venomous propaganda that emanated from the supposed “contentious statement” by Margai was the central question of selective treatment of citizens by the police.
It should not be forgotten that, before the said statement, Charles Margai had been very critical of the country’s style of governance and its system of justice. He had expressed serious grievances relating to the violation of his constitutional rights by individuals connected to the presidency. He alleged in particular that the president’s wife, Sia Nyama Koroma, used the police to perpetrate acts of intimidation and lawlessness calculated to deny him access to his property. Charles Margai had reportedly sought an amicable resolution to the problem by writing a letter to the president and also personally visiting him in respect to the allegation surrounding the first lady. When all these failed, Margai then revealed to the press that he intended to seek for a warrant of arrest against the president’s wife for the alleged acts of trespass and other violations. Few hours later, Margai himself was arrested by the police on allegations of “subversion.”
Minutes after the arrest, the police and ruling party propagandists immediately subsumed Charles Margai’s grievances and complaints around the land issue, and substituted it with a discussion surrounding the supposed contentious sentence singled out by the police from Margai’s statement. They argued that Margai had threatened the security of the country. Some even said he threatened the life of the president. Both the police and the APC propagandists were no longer willing to discuss the pertinent questions raised by Charles Margai. Neither were they keen on looking at the basis of the controversy that generated the statement for which Margai was arrested.
Many people doubted how the police and the APC propagandists could see Margai’s statement a concern to national security, yet they could not find the alleged employment of police officers by the president’s wife to intimidate and harass other Sierra Leoneans a serious violation of the country’s constitution. It seemed the police were not even willing to talk about the supposed involvement of the president’s wife and the police in the alleged discharge of acts of intimidation and brutality against defenseless citizens, which infuriated Margai in the first place. So, Charles Margai’s statement, whether it is considered subversive or otherwise, was the product of frustration that was caused by state repression and the excessive application of political authority. The supposed contentious statement by Margai could not have been made by him had the alleged conditions of brutality and violence, both physically and psychologically, not been present to begin with.
From this background, we have to question whether the police were just interested in protecting the politicians in power. Opposition politicians have regularly accused police officers of biases in favor of those in power. They often alleged that police protection is offered only to those with political and material influence or connections. When these accusations persist in a country, ordinary people lose faith and confidence in the national security institutions. And it gives way to thoughts of alternative self-defense as reportedly advanced by Charles Margai.
In any country where the ordinary citizens and opposition politicians in particular feel they are at the mercy of the state and those within the corridors of power, then the stability of that society is largely at risk. The question of the national security of any country is largely dependent upon the neutrality, independence, and fairness of the national institutions upholding its governance mechanism and structure. These national institutions include the police service, the judiciary and the other democratic institutions established to protect citizens from dictatorship and repression. They must act fairly and independently if the peace and stability of such a society is to be maintained.
This is the significance of Charles Margai’s controversy. He forcefully ignited, through his arrest and detention, a public debate on the style of governance in the country, and by extension, placed the very democratic credentials of President Koroma to test. If nothing else, it questioned the independence of the country’s judiciary and the neutrality of the police force in dealing with cases involving state actors and their immediate family members.
Charles Margai’s detention challenged Koroma’s claim to democracy and was surely a dent on the assumed human rights credentials of the president. It exposed the country’s seeming lack of adherence to the principles of the rule of law. These are the general implications. This is what Charles Margai sought to address with his protest. It was a direct confrontation against state repression and abuse of political power. Charles Margai’s protest questioned the rule of law in the country.
It is therefore within this context that a fundamental question arises: how can the country overcome this anti-democratic situation? Answering this question requires a re-examination of the entire social system itself; it requires a social postmortem that goes at the heart of the society in a bid to diagnose the root causes of its many sociopolitical contradictions and economic challenges. This is a prerequisite.
A social investigation, conducted with a scientific approach towards society, will reveal the varied typologies of contradictions that exist among the masses and how they can be overturned. It is through such a process that questions of class stratification and resource exploitation, which are antagonisms resulting from policies and actions of the neocolonial state, can be unraveled. It is also by such method that the hypocrisy of the neocolonialist state and its idea of democracy can be fully exposed and eventually defeated.
This is what will re-position democracy and restore constitutionalism in a country. But democracy and constitutionalism cannot win in any country without a social transformation that destroys the class structure of the existing political order responsible for the current problems experienced in that society. To accomplish this, a scientific study of the society must be undertaken. The result of such an investigation must be a theory that answers the many questions raised or discovered by the investigation. It is such a theory that will produce both the organization and the program that challenge the order of authoritarian democracy. It is by this method and approach that Africans can prevent the continuous rise of despotic presidents and the ongoing triumph of the system of economic exploitation and political corruption that a state governed by authoritarian democrats engenders.
The above article was published in May 2013 by Africanist Press. We republish it today to remind our readers of our past work and why it is impossible to characterize the Africanist Press as a partisan project influenced by the politics of the SLPP or APC.