This week I continue my ‘President Tejan Kabbah's legacy series. But first my apologies for the delay in bringing this second instalment. This may sound soppy but my recent transition from active practice to academia is largely to blame; the new challenges— teaching, researching, conferencing, writing and peer-reviewing journal articles, and more—have all been taking their toll on my time. And yet the journalism in me keeps blubbering for attention while waiting for the slightest opportunity to prop up. In this case the time is now. Moreover, the timing of the continuation of this series is perfectly right given the count down to this year's elections now billed for August 11, about twelve weeks from now, and what is more, given that May is a very important month in terms of human rights (largely the focus of this piece) with World Press Freedom Day on the 3^rd coming for special mention.

In my first of this series, I looked at Kabbah's performance in fostering democracy in Sierra Leone, an area where his government no doubt scored remarkable success, at least as far as institutional reforms are concerned.  Drawing on data obtained from the web sites of some local newspapers and leading international human rights organisations notably Human Rights Watch, I analyse the ups and/or downs of the Tejan Kabbah  presidency in the promotion and protection of the human rights of Sierra Leoneans, as well as his performance in bringing about peace and stability to the country. I look at human rights in the broad sense covering not only civil and political (this instalment),  but also economic, social and cultural, rights (next instalment) enshrined in the twin 1966 United Nations Covenants, which draw their inspiration from the 1948 UN charter.

When Tejan Kabbah assumed the leadership of Sierra Leone as the first ever democratically elected president in March 1996, there was indeed optimism that given his international exposure he was going to restore his people's human rights that had been seriously constrained under the NPRC junta. He did initially succeed in establishing the rule of law especially in the big cities with the near disappearance of foot soldiers roaming around and harassing poor civilians. This respite was however short-lived in the provinces, especially in the east and the south, where it was quickly interrupted by routine confrontations between soldiers of the regular national army and kamajor militias. Rather than engaging the RUF movement, these two rival forces turned their weapons against each other and as it where the civilians paid a heavy price as witnessed especially in Bo and Kenema.  

President Kabbah indeed started on a sound footing when he set himself the task of ending the civil war as his first priority literally taking over from where his predecessor NPRC junta leader Maada Bio had left off. This sounded pragmatic as human rights can hardly be protected in a situation of armed conflict. In good measure he religiously pursued the diplomatic option initiated by Maada Bio, who through his sister married to Ibrahim Deen Jalloh, one of the leaders of the RUF, and the UK-based International Alert, had opened a line of communication with the rebel leader Foday Sankoh. These efforts culminated into the signing of the historic Abidjan Peace Accord on November 30 1996 by Kabbah and Sankoh officially ending the war. A National Commission for the Consolidation of Peace was set up comprising members from both government and RUF. A ceasefire was put in place although violations from both sides, especially the rebel side, were reported in the media. Added to these violations, it was clear that the Abidjan Accord was going to fail as there were few bottle necks ranging from logistics to the power-sharing aspect of the deal; the latter was particularly frowned upon in top government circles.

The Accord suffered its first major setback with the arrest of Foday Sankoh in Nigeria for alleged gun running, followed almost immediately by the announcement of his overthrow from the RUF leadership by his representatives in the Peace Consolidation Commission in Freetown. And the RUF no. 2 Sam Bockarie (Mosquito) put the final nail on the coffin of the Abidjan peace agreement when he arrested all members of a government peace mission, including the RUF coup leaders, ostensibly protesting the arrest of his boss in Nigeria. While Sankoh's flip-flops and his movement's refusal to strictu sensu respect the cease-fire were glaringly suspect, the handling of the situation by the Kabbah government leading to all the above could in no way be said to have helped. The rest is history and there is no space here to go into all that…

Back then, publishing in print, this newspaper wrote a number of commentaries calling on the authorities to do something to resolve the differences between the two rival  forces and avert the worst from happening, but as it were, all that came to nought. And when this paper reiterated those points in the days following the coup, while at the same time condemning the junta take-over, its editors were quickly branded junta collaborators; it was sad indeed. What came handy here was the unfortunate framing of our criticism of the government's responsibility in the unfolding sad events as an act of the devil and the glossing over of our condemnation of the coup itself. To put it in a nutshell, the fact that the Tejan Kabbah presidency failed to manage the situation leading to the AFRC coup, it cannot entirely escape responsibility for the untold human right violations that people were forced to experience between 1996 and 2002. Writing in hindsight some years down the line, I am only now beginning to appreciate the enormous risks some of us were taking in trying to call a spade a spade in a climate of intense instability. You can easily be misunderstood, and consumed in the process if you are unlucky, when all you are doing is your job. I am now wiser.

One legacy that would no doubt linger for a long time to come in the minds of Sierra Leoneans is the fact that whatever you may say the Kabbah Presidency ended the almost 11-year civil war on the negotiating table although it is recognised that it came a little too late, for as the saying goes, ‘better late than never'. Coming on the heels of the bloody 1999 January 6 attack on Freetown by the RUF/AFRC alliance, which left thousands dead and amputated, and nearly brought the Kabbah government to its knees, was the Lome peace accord of July 7 that laid the ground work for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. This time, the government demonstrated goodwill by yielding to power-sharing with the rebels, something it hitherto found difficult to accept in previous peace agreements. The Lome Accord power-sharing deal worked for sometime; unfortunately things started to go bad when Foday Sankoh's flip-flops –saying one thing today and doing something different tomorrow—began to rear their ugly heads once again. It was only when Sankoh was replaced by General Issa Sesay, a much more moderate leader that the Lome peace process was accelerated leading to the signing of the Abuja Peace Accord in 2001 which finally ended the civil war. The Kabbah government must be commended for the patience and understanding it exercised during this difficult period in the country's history.

Nonetheless, if the 2007 Human Rights Watch Sierra Leone Country Report is anything to go by, ‘few improvements have been made in the dynamics that contributed to the emergence of the conflict in 1991—rampant corruption, gross public financial mismanagement, inadequate distribution of the country's natural resources, and weak rule of law' since the end of the country's brutal civil war in January 2002.   Undermining the rule of law, according to this Report, are defects such as extortion and bribery involving court officials, insufficient numbers of judges, magistrates and prosecuting attorneys; very little representation for the accused; absenteeism by court personnel; inadequate remuneration for judiciary personnel; extended periods of pre-trial detention, and sub-standard prison conditions.  I am however at pains to buy the organisation's pessimistic view that this slow pace of progress so far made by the Tejan Kabbah government renders Sierra Leone ‘vulnerable to future instability'. I think it is unreasonable to think that these chronic problems, inherited in the first place by the government, would disappear overnight. It is fair to acknowledge the progress made so far and identify areas that need urgent attention for improvement.

The lightening success registered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission remains by far one of the most important legacies of the Tejan Kabbah presidency. President Kabbah himself set the ball rolling by being among the first government officials to testify before the commission. He was bold enough to admit the mistakes made in the past that contributed to all the human rights violations that resulted from the political crisis. The government worked closely with civil society organisations and the United Nations Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) to educate the population, especially in the rural areas, about the findings of the 2005 TRC Report. According to Human Rights Watch, the ‘Report noted that decades of corrupt rule by Sierra Leone's political elite had largely created the conditions that led to the armed conflict. The recommendations include abolishing the death penalty, repealing laws that criminalize seditious libel, increasing the transparency of the mining industry, improving good governance, and establishing a reparations fund for war victims.   And here again, although, as the HRW noted, very little has been achieved by government in implementing these recommendations, it is reasonable to say that efforts leading to the setting up of the Independent Media Commission by an Act of Parliament to manage the affairs of the media, including hearing and responding to complaints from members of the public and looking into persistent demands for reform of the seditious criminal libel of Public Order Act 1965 must not be swept under the carpet.

This brings us to Tejan Kabbah's legacy in the area of freedom of expression –that most capital of all human rights. The first few months of the Kabbah government saw a positive line of communication opened with the media by then information minister George Banda Thomas. The weekly press conference that Banda Thomas introduced largely helped to facilitate the flow of information from government to the people through the state and private media and reduce misunderstandings regarding government reform programmes and efforts to end the war.  Sadly however, the honeymoon did not last long as the government was waiting for the slightest opportunity to manifest its true intentions on how to handle the media.   I and my colleagues at Expo Times ended up the hardest hit by this whirlwind;  I suffered harassment and imprisonment six times between  August 1996 and  March 1997 alone, four of which it was that notorious 1965 Public Order Act that was invoked since it served as a convenient legal cover-up for arbitrary imprisonment. All this is well documented and so there is no point going over it here again.

But thank God all is not yet lost; there is evidence to suggest that the press freedom situation has been improving since the setting up of the IMC which now bears the burden of easing tensions between the government and the media practitioners. This has resulted into a considerable drop in the number of press freedom violations such as the harassment and arbitrary detention of journalists. In relative terms journalists now enjoy far better freedom than what used to obtain during our time. You dare not publish some of the articles I now see on the Internet in those days (before 2002) without expecting a dozen police visitors brandishing a warrant of arrest. Small wonder that Sierra Leone has recently been faring better in the press freedom surveys conducted by credible press freedom campaigners. At least President Tejan Kabbah has since disappeared from Reporters Without Borders' list of press freedom predators. When you want to complete the success story you cannot help but add the increasing media pluralism with over 40 newspapers and 33 private radio and TV channels with the widening access to information fall-out, another important aspect of freedom of expression. And yet all this good record risks being clouded by the Public Order Act still in the country's law books even when it is rarely used these days.  I am therefore joining colleagues such as Isaac Massaquoi in calling for its immediate reform. It is perfectly normal to have civil libel law with fines imposed against defaulters but to resort to criminalising libel smells of deliberate attempts by the political class to gag the press and frame journalists as ‘devils' rather than development partners.

President Kabbah at least demonstrated goodwill when, following persistent demands by SLAJ under the presidency of Alhaji I. B. Kargbo, one of Sierra Leone's most respected journalists, put the ball in the court of the IMC. I remember reading a piece sometime last year in which Isaac Massaquoi took a swipe on the IMC for what he called the ‘unscientific methods' it was using to survey public opinion on the important question of reforming such an outrageous law. I honestly expect better from this commission particularly when it is being manned by highly respected professional colleagues like Bernadette Cole and Christo Johnson. It is not clear how far the IMC has come in playing this ball, which is why it is important to keep an open eye on this developing story. I think with the reviewing of the 1991 Constitution well underway, the timing for SLAJ and the IMC to act fast and ensure that the reform of this Act is taken on board cannot be righter than now.  

In my next instalment of this series I would take a look at the legacy of Tejan Kabbah's presidency in the area of economic growth and development, where his performance in the promotion of his people's economic, social and cultural rights enshrined in the 1966 UN covenant would closely be examined.