Guide to a coup: A West African’s list of things to watch

Last week’s announcement of an attempted coup in Sierra Leone may have come as a surprise to many. Well, to those who don’t pay attention.

The signs had been on the wall for many weeks, if not months or years. They may have begun in neighbouring Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso where men-in-arms exploited a landmine of disgruntlement fuelled by decades of unfulfilled promises by the political class to topple civilian governments.

Sierra Leone was boiling just as Niger was collapsing under a military junta who are still detaining elected President Mohamed Bazoum, whom they accuse of failing the economy and security obligations in the country.

Violent protests

In Sierra Leone, three major events in the last three years provided the strongest indications of a potential danger. The most recent was the August 10, 2022 riots in mainly opposition dominated parts of the country. Dozens of people, including security officers, were killed after angry youth protested against what they termed economic hardship.

But the government saw “terrorists” who President Julius Maada Bio said were part of a plot masterminded by politicians to overthrow him, and he vowed to deal with all involved.

On June 30th, several people, including senior military officers, were arrested for their alleged involvement in subversive activities.

One of the suspects is a former Chief Superintendent of Police – Mohamed Turay. He was among several police officers dismissed in 2020, provoking displeasure in wider sections of the population, who saw it as part of an ethnic purge of the security forces.

Turay moved to Liberia in May last year, two months before the August 10 riots.

Outside interference

Politics in West Africa is never entirely an internal affair. As has been seen elsewhere in the region, there is always the outside factor in situations like this. It has been Western, former colonial masters, in some instance. These days, even Russians are accused of seeking favourable leaders or prepping some.

Unlike its neighbours, Sierra Leone doesn’t have an insurgency for Western powers to exploit. Except its toxic geopolitical divide which, it appears, was well exploited.

With the absence of a Russia influence, China becomes the centre of interest. And everyone else wants to elbow them off the table.

After an initial setback, the Chinese skilfully managed to make inroads in the last four years of Bio’s first term, dominating the mining sector, much to the dismay of its rivals. In Niger, the lucrative uranium dominated by France has always been a bone of contention.  The French have controlled the mining and it mattered who was in charge to ensure a safe passage.

Disputed elections

Factoring this into the bigger picture, it makes sense how Western countries handled the June 24 General Election. The outcome favoured Bio but opposition groups rejected it with claims of rigging.  The Western media in particular went with opposition cries, indicating it as ‘fraudulent elections’ that lack transparency, echoing words of Western diplomats.

The conduct of Western diplomatic representatives prior to the elections had more than enough signs of lack of love for the Bio administration – from accusations of failing to outrightly condemn violence attributed to opposition supporters, to openly romancing with civil society groups seen as critical of government.

Post-election, Western diplomats competed to express concern about the supposed lack of transparency in the process. The European Union Elections Observation Mission (EUEOM) and the United States Embassy were the most vocal.

The EUEOM observers came in as heroes poised to save the democracy of a typical poor country, holding meetings and having photoshoots with key players in the elections, including the incumbent President. But curiously, they left quietly, like a group of unsuccessful explorers.

At the height of the confusion in the elections, a video emerged of the main opposition candidate Dr Samura Camara confessing that he’d been asked by the Carter Center to officially request for the deployment of international observers to help it secure funding.

US Ambassador David Reimer also found himself in the middle of a scandal involving his attitude towards the elections. The embassy was forced to issue a statement dismissing rumours that he’d been recalled by Washington over an alleged diplomatic row. The US State Department later issued a statement reiterating what its ambassador and his Western allies had said all along.

Sierra Leone hasn’t cracked yet. But the events here aren’t strange.

In Guinea, the coup was preceded by an election in which Alpha Conde won by a ‘landslide’, endorsed by his Western allies regardless of the conduct of the polls. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, too had presidents in office after an election.

Protests after elections may not always mean the government is bad or opposition is saint. But they have been exploited so often in West Africa that we often raise our antennae to catch the next coup. So, why the sudden interest in Sierra Leone from the West?

The local Speaker of Parliament Dr Abass Bundu says it’s all about a regime change agenda.

Poverty and teeming masses of tired folks

In Sierra Leone, the last three elections have had similar features in how polls are conducted: The poor vote, the elite take office, and sit on their hands, at least in the words of their critics.

And there are ‘debts’ and unfulfilled promises. President Bio, for instance, still owes his predecessor Ernest Bai Koroma a congratulatory call after the 2012 elections, the results of which he disputes up to this day. Bio, of course, is a retired soldier but is also a former junta leader in 1996 when the country fell among warlords.

Then, as today, the poor have often voted but suffered the consequences of bad elections. As seen in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, there are always those voters who can still come to the streets to support juntas if they take power from leaders they voted in.