The declining prestige and influence of Western powers have been occurring in direct proportion to the abandonment of Western theories of “liberal democracy” by most states on the African continent.
The latest example was the implosion of stability in the West African state of Sierra Leone following its June 24 presidential election debacle.
- Coups d’etat, often in disguised form but increasingly more direct, have become, once again, viable forms of “regime change” in Africa.
- The rapidly-diminishing power in this extended region (including the Middle East) of such supranational entities as the United Nations, African Union, Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Southern African Development Community, the Economic Community of West African States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, etc.
- The rise in localized unilateral, bilateral, and limited multilateral national actions to replace supranational entities led to a reemergence of ancient regional rivalries as well as the fragility of externally-imposed national frameworks that contain traditional antipathies.
- The declining ability of out-of-region powers—such as the United States, Russia, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and China—to determine outcomes in the Middle East, Northern Tier, and Africa.
- The reactive (almost desperate) rise in new attempts by external powers to reinsert themselves into these regions and to attempt to draw on the use of such bodies as the United Nations as a legitimizing force for such re-interventions. This includes the belief in external powers that they should redouble approaches used for the past two centuries when the utility of such approaches was diminishing.
- The rise of new coercive powers within these conjoined regions, despite the economic fragility or other constraints of such players, particularly including Turkey, Iran, Qatar, and Egypt in this regard, with the declining tide of Western influences isolating (to some degree) the former positions of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others.
- The attempts by those states that had relied heavily on Western support for legitimacy—particularly Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others—to “reinvent” their regional roles and stand-alone legitimacies.
- The declining influence of Western powers in these regions did not imply a corresponding increase in the leverage of “non-Western” powers (specifically Russia, China, or India). However, the now “open architecture” of the strategic framework meant that the scope existed for more creative diplomacy by out-of-region powers.
- The resurgence of ancient identity forms based around pre-modern structures (was) not dependent on 19th- and 20th-century external validation.
The significant use of violence and other forms of coercion by Mr. Bio, 59, to claim victory—reelection—was instructive. And it was possibly the blatant overturning of even Sierra Leone’s own election rules and vote-counting procedures, along with the violence, which caused all international observers to reject the declared election outcome. The possible impact of the international community’s rejection of the election’s legitimacy has yet to be determined. It may, or may not, lead to Mr. Bio being forced from office. A decade earlier, such opprobrium, especially coupled with domestic unrest, would have guaranteed the difficulty of his retaining power.
Mr. Bio had used the Sierra Leone Armed Forces and Police and other mechanisms of intimidation to control the election. He also “exercised influence” over Chief Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh, whose methods and reporting were shown by observers and opposition parties to have been far from transparent and, in many instances, blatantly fabricated.
It had been one of the most violent and divisive elections in Sierra Leone’s history, and numerous lives had been lost within the ranks of the main opposition party, the All People’s Congress (APC), led by Samura Kamara, 72. Several assassination attempts against Mr. Kamara directly involved the Armed Forces and/or police and were captured on video. The most recent attempt occurred the day after the election, when Mr. Bio became concerned that, despite his precautions, Mr. Kamara could still be declared the winner.
At that point, Mr. Bio was said to have had Mr. Konneh held at gunpoint in the early hours of June 26, demanding that he immediately announce Mr. Bio as the winner. Mr. Bio, a former Army brigadier who had spent time in exile in the United States after his brief stint as military head of state (1996), had risked everything to claim the 2023 election.
That incident with Mr. Konneh occurred just after the failed, final attempt to kill Mr. Kamara after he and his colleagues were surrounded by military personnel while they were in APC headquarters in Freetown, the capital. The incident, which involved army personnel pouring live fire into the building, occurred when Mr. Kamara and party officials were attempting to hold a press conference, and, as a result, foreign news cameramen captured it. Mr. Kamara, inside the building, tweeted: “People laying on the floor and the military has surrounded the building. Live bullets fired at my private office at the party headquarters. ... This is an assassination attempt.” Teargas was also fired into the building. But there had also been earlier assassination attempts against Mr. Kamara, including one on June 9 in Koidu City, Kono District, in which it appeared that police officers were complicit. Numerous photographs of that incident were circulated on social media.
Even before that, on April 2, security team members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) had attacked Mr. Kamara’s vehicle when it was leaving Freetown International Airport en route to the city. Numerous other video-recorded instances exist on social media of SLPP militias attacking villagers in the run-up to the election.
But so concerned was Mr. Bio during the election period, and the uncertainty and violence mounting after the actual polling had closed, that his wife, Fatima, who had been associated with much of the corruption of the president’s first term, flew out of Freetown’s Lungi airport, apparently for Banjul, The Gambia.
Mr. Kamara and his APC deputy secretary-general had, on the morning of June 26, held a press conference to claim victory in the poll on the basis of independent monitoring of the election. But Mr. Bio refused to concede, and later that day, the Election Commission issued a vague statement that Mr. Bio was leading the vote count, with 60 percent of votes already tallied. The commission issued no substantial, verifiable data even when, on June 27, it announced that Mr. Bio had been reelected. It said Mr. Bio had received 56.17 percent of ballots cast, just over the 55 percent needed to avoid a second-round run-off vote.
National Election Watch (NEW), which deployed 6,000 observers across Sierra Leone, including 750 specially trained individuals, indicated that Mr. Bio had received between 47.7 percent and 53.1 percent of the votes and that the APC candidate (Mr. Kamura) had received between 43.8 percent and 49.2 percent of the vote. In other words, a run-off between those two leading contenders was warranted under the Constitution.
So a similar situation prevailed in Sierra Leone to the Feb. 25 situation in Nigeria. In both instances, the supposedly independent election commissions had declared a first-round winner when extensive independent evidence suggested the requirement for a run-off. But in the Sierra Leone exercise, where international observers had greater access than in Nigeria, there was a major criticism of the Election Commission. The U.S. Carter Center called for the commission to release credible data to support its claim. Various sources within the Sierra Leone government indicated that the result announced was prepared by State House (presidency) officials, and Mr. Konneh initially refused to read the scripted result. Mr. Bio “was going to hurt Konneh,” one source noted, if he did not comply.
A joint statement by the governments of the United States, the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, and the EU expressed concern over “the lack of transparency in the tabulation process,” and no observers ratified the elections as free and fair.
Mr. Bio responded by demanding that all the staffs of the country’s paramount chiefs congratulate him on his reelection and converge on Freetown to do so to make it clear to the international bodies that he was “loved by the people.” Mr. Bio apparently threatened to deal with those who did not comply.
But more significant were unconfirmed but widespread reports that the interim president of neighboring Guinea, Lt. Col. Mamady Doumbouya, had put troops onto the Sierra Leone border and was prepared to deploy them into Freetown to arrest Mr. Bio. Ironically, Lt. Col. Doumbouya came to power through a coup on Sept. 5, 2021. The Guinea leader has claimed that Mr. Bio and senior Sierra Leonean government officials were complicit in the widespread narcotics trade into Guinea. There has been a longstanding territorial dispute between the two countries around Yenga, a village in Kissi Teng Chiefdom, Kailahun District, in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.
The regional body, ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), maintains its ECOMOG regional force, of which Guinea is a member, and it reportedly still has some residual role in Sierra Leone. Whether ECOWAS would authorize intervention in Sierra Leone, however, would likely depend on whether the election violence and the emerging political-economic isolation of the country return it to civil war.
On a broader canvas, however, the Sierra Leone situation has emerged as merely symptomatic of the sense of impunity that political figures, with access to military capabilities, now plan their trajectories to retain office and power. Isolation of Sierra Leone, for example, by Western powers would merely move Sierra Leone into the trading bloc of China, Russia, and others who have refused to join the sanctions-oriented coercive regime of the West.
That spells difficulty for the Western bloc but also begs the question of whether African states will create, or revert to, more African forms of power legitimacy.
