Sierra Leone: Kabbah's record.

From the miserable, blood-drenched nation dismissed by many as beyond salvage, Sierra Leone has conducted two successful multiparty elections since the end of the civil war in 2002 and has had an annual growth rate of more than 7% (the highest in west Africa). It is set to conduct another crucial general election on 11 August to find a successor to President Tejan Kabbah. Lansana Gberie looks at Kabbah's record and who is likely to succeed him.

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In the Freetown suburb of Aberdeen--one of the original settlements of freed slaves brought from the Americas to this small coastal state at the turn of the 18th century--there is, almost hidden from view, a small, 30-bedroom hotel whose recent trajectory roughly mirrors the country itself. Hotel Barmoi, perched between the stunning blue Atlantic Ocean and lush green vegetation (Cape Sierra), gives an immediate impression of somnolence and easy luxury to the visitor. Its (recent) history, however, is anything but.

The country continues to get gratuitous battering from all kinds of quarters, some unlikely (think about the recent Ed Zwick offering Blood Diamond), and impressive successes like Hotel Barmoi are simply overlooked. But the gains made since the war ended on the wider level are even more impressive.

There has been minimal violence in the country, and scarcely any incident of even armed robbery leading to the loss of lives. This is certainly a credit to the government, which insisted on and accomplished systematic community disarmament (accompanying the disarmament of warring militias) in 2001. It is easy to see how a less competent government could well have undone the hard-won peace.

Kabbah's government, which the Western media finds so easy to caricature as dysfunctional and corrupt, can in fact claim remarkable progress in post-war reconstruction or rebuilding. Primary education has been expanded exponentially, with school enrolment rising from 400,000 when Kabbah took over in 1996 to 1.2 million in 2007.

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The achievement becomes even more impressive when you realise that the enrolment of girls in schools--always a difficult issue in most of Africa--grew by 300% during the period.

There has also been substantial devolution of authority to district and local councils (one of the reasons for the prolongation of the war was the highly centralised nature of the Sierra Leonean state, with the writ of the state, in effect, limited to Freetown and a few provincial towns.).

According to the British development arm, DfID (which is Sierra Leone's most important sponsor and a frequent critic), since the war ended a total of 406 km of roads have been resurfaced or improved, 153 primary and secondary schools built or rehabilitated, and 76 hospitals or health centres constructed or rehabilitated.

The government has also set up a National Revenue Authority and a social insurance trust fund (NASSIT), making government revenue generation and disbursement more effective and transparent.

Economic growth has been at 7.5%, and Sierra Leone's $1.6bn external debt was wiped off by donors last year. There is now realistic prospect--largely through the efforts of the urbane and articulate foreign minister, Momodu Koroma--that the country's cities will soon start enjoying regular, non-stop electricity.

So why has the forthcoming elections, on 11 August, induced so much anxiety about the country's future? There are already predictions, from the usual suspects, that the country will relapse into its violent past, and some Western donors are frantically trying to influence the outcome of the polls in favour of untested or historically tainted parties.

The elections will be offering three leading choices for a new president who will replace Kabbah (as well as candidates to fill a 118-member Parliament).

The frontrunner is Solomon Berewa, currently vice president and candidate of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party. A highly successful former criminal lawyer, Berewa has been central to the reconstruction efforts in Sierra Leone, and is known to be a smooth and efficient--some say also manipulative--operator. Known as "Solo Di Bomba" by his admirers for his reputation for decisiveness. Berewa will face Ernest Koroma, a former insurance executive and candidate for the All Peoples Congress (APC). Koroma has had no experience in government, often appears gentlemanly and harmless, but his party's last administration, headed by the slothful, self-adoring General Joseph Momoh, was overthrown in a military coup after reducing the country to penury and plunging it into a brutal civil war. One of Momoh's more memorable statements was: "Education is a privilege, not a right."

Koroma has pledged, almost incredibly, to follow the policies of Momoh and his ruthless predecessor, Siaka Stevens (who introduced a one-party state and banned all opposition parties). Another candidate is Charles Margai, formerly a cabinet colleague of Berewa. Margai decided to set up his own party, the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), when he lost the leadership of SLPP bid to Berewa--rather like Stevens deciding to confect a new constitution after realising that the one that brought him to power wouldn't allow him to stay on forever.

Glib and impatient, Margai, the son of a former prime minister, struck me, during a brief encounter, as someone driven by a vaulting sense of entitlement but with little to back it up.

Both Margai and Koroma have been widely reported to have made public statements threatening to unleash violence should they lose the elections--that is, should the SLPP win, as seems likely.

In a none-too-subtle gesture in this regard, Margai has claimed (to the International Crisis Group no less), that he commands the support of many of the ex-militia fighters who created mayhem in the country during its war years.

And shortly after making his threats (through a friendly Freetown newspaper), Koroma announced that the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), the group representing the uniquely brutal rebels who spearheaded the war in the country, have joined his APC and will be campaigning together. The development should serve as an antidote for a common mania among Western observers of the African political scene. They have a tendency to suspect the government of having both the capacity to rig elections, and to unleash violence on opponents.

The 1994 local government elections in Sierra Leone, which (according to an expert report) saw APC candidates rigging the polls even more competently than candidates of the ruling SLPP, should now dispel the first delusion.

And the recent home burnings in Pujehun District (a stronghold of the SLPP), clearly caused by ex-militia supporters of Margai, should have dispelled the second.

The August elections present both a huge challenge and an opportunity for Sierra Leone: their successful, violence-free conduct will mean that the country has clearly turned the corner, ready to build upon the significant accomplishments in governance and infra-structural development. Failure is not an option: it would mean disaster.