and (right) Founding President Siaka Stevens (right)
meets Fidel Castro
removed in the 1992 coup led by Captain Valentine Strasser,
Leonean President Joseph Momoh,
Far left: Sierra
that both Ivorian president Henri Konan Bedié and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré were actively attempting “to get the NPRC and the RUF to the table”. A few days later, over an ICRC radio
hook-up at the British High Commission (which I witnessed), Sankoh told Bio that he had to postpone the scheduled elections before any progress towards negotiations could be made. Bio’s response was that such a decision was ultimately up to Sierra Leoneans and suggested that the two meet in Côte d’Ivoire or Burkina Faso. Sankoh rejected the two venues at first
in favour of talks within Sierra Leone, but his resistance quickly evaporated and a meeting was set up in Abidjan for the end of February 1996. I arrived in Abidjan a week or so before the peace delegates did. With my friend the late Ambrose Ganda, I visited the place where some of the RUF representatives in the country were living, a gated house in one of the suburbs of Abidjan. Te peace talks, at least as far as Bio’s
“ Bio still clearly thinks that the 30 December
killings were the most disastrous thing to happen under the NPRC. His bitterness was undisguised.”
the most powerful man in the country. Strasser, now remote and unengaged, was, rather, something of a figurehead. He wasn’t even attending cabinet meetings, and he became too beholden to certain civilian members of the NPRC who had formed a political party, the National Unity Party (NUP), to contest elections scheduled for 1996. As a result, Strasser was dispatched out of the country, in a helicopter, to Guinea in 1995, and Bio took over as head of state. Te palace coup was an anti-climax of sorts. I asked Bio what his proudest achievements were. “We had three goals as a government,” he said.” We wanted to end the war, revive the economy, and then hand over to a democratically elected government. You can judge us on what we did. Te war derailed most of our plans.” But even so, under the NPRC, he said,
electricity was largely restored, there were no longer long queues for petrol and rice (as was common under Momoh), roads were being constructed, substantive peace
talks were begun with the RUF, and “most important, we handed over the govern- ment to a democratically-elected president. We reintroduced credible plural politics, and we left peacefully, setting a standard which would be hard to mess with.” Tere had been some speculations that
Bio was not serious about either the peace talks or the democratic process. I followed both very closely at the time, attending the peace talks in Côte d’Ivoire as well as covering the democratic process daily. On taking over from Strasser, Bio made
a terse appeal, broadcast live on national TV and radio: “To you, Corporal Foday Sankoh, the message from my government is that we are prepared to meet with you anywhere, any time and without precon- ditions.” Te RUF, it seemed, had been waiting
for such a gesture. Sankoh quickly sent word through the International Commit- tee of the Red Cross that he was willing to talk to Bio, who responded publicly that he too was ready to talk. He announced
involvement went, did not at all appear rigged. Bio certainly kept to the timetable to hand over power. Tat power went to the SLPP and its new leader, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Some of Bio’s colleagues were not at all happy: they had set up a new party, the National Unity Party (NUP), and they had expected Bio to manipulate the out- come of the polls to give power to them.
The future Bio left the country after handing over power, and took two degrees in the USA. Strasser, on the other hand, flunked his studies at Warwick University in the UK, and returned to Sierra Leone a diminished man. I asked Bio which candidate he takes most seriously as a rival for the SLPP flag- bearer position. He didn’t hesitate. “Tree people really, and for various reasons,” he said. “Te first is Dr Kadie Sesay. She has excited potentially the same people who would support me, and many of them are coming to me to suggest that she and I pool together. I’m very open to that. “Te other is Andrew Kellie, for similar
reasons. And then there is Usman Boie Kamara, for the simple reason that he has a lot of money, and this current phase is about winning [over] delegates. You see what I mean.” Knowing what odds he has had to overcome in his life, underestimat- ing Bio may not be well advised.
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