Abdulai Mansaray: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 5 September 2025:
Why many people see journalism as the barometer of society and thermometer of public opinion is anybody’s guess. Even though some see elections as advance auction sale of stolen goods, the majority considers it as one of the few times it gets to use its voice…..to a point.
Sierra Leone will be going to the polls in 2028, as part of its election cycle for two. Our usual suspects, the APC and SLPP will be at their best to convince the populace to choose who to blame for national woes for the next five years.
Getting the voters to vote is one of the most demanding exercises called campaigning. It’s obvious that this requires a lot of machinations, skulduggery, politicking, deception, propaganda and so on.
The internet, by virtue of social media has become the most powerful tool for electioneering purposes. As we all know, social media has the good, the bad and the ugly sides. The voters will as usual be subjected to emotional diets and steroids of “truth syndrome”.
The trauma of constantly trying to verify, believe, trust, accept, reject or be convinced by what they see, hear, read etc is definitely going to be one of the emotional scars that will be inflicted on the usually unsuspecting and gullible followers. This will be a contest between truths and untruths.
The dichotomy will largely depend on preconceived views, opinions and the political persuasion of the reader, the listener and the voter in general. That is what our politicians and their spin doctors will aim to exploit, more so in the forthcoming 2028 election. The level of desperation from both parties is evidently clear and palpable.
Is it any surprise that the shadow boxing has already started among the various camps? At this gestation stage of the electioneering pregnancy, what we see is the domestic “friendly fire” within each party. At this stage, the contestants as main players seem to remain in the shadows while they line up their agitators, spin doctors and provocateurs.
In the APC party, we hear of some candidates already sidelined and supposedly disqualified as not eligible to contest for certain echelons of the political pyramid, even before the delegates conference or otherwise.
The same is happening in the SLPP where birthrights for eligibility are being questioned. The first salvos are flying past to test the waters and gauge the thermometric and barometric readings of the electorate. The parties are taking vital observations including the pulse, temperature, respiration, etc of the voters as they feel one another.
If we are to use these first flares as a way to calibrate what lies ahead of the election cycle, it might not be too far fetched to assume that this is going to be one of the fiercest election contests to be fought (not literally physical fights though, please) in recent times. The desperation is evident.
If political parties start their campaigns by cancelling out each other within their own respective parties with such venom, can you imagine what it would feel like when that opposition is taken outside? Such a scenario has a lot of implications for both parties.
Firstly, it exposes the seeming and fragile party unity that is projected to the electorate and hence weakens the threads at the seams. Interesting to see the smoke screen of reconciliation after the White Smoke for national positions like the flagbearer.
Not everything is a bad as some of us would like to portray though. This is the season when politicians are promising with subtlety, to build bridges where there are no rivers. Politicians come like the proverbial bird that saves the fish from drowning.
As part of their charm offensive, we see them pop up at funerals as pallbearers, signing condolence books, meeting the dreg man at Attaya bases and rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty in equal combinations.
We also see the weekly procession of others attending mosques, churches, donating and contributing to local community development projects and undertakings. Others are opening new markets, some cutting ribbons on bridges, and gracing several private and public occasions.
The common denominator in all these is the ever presence of the glaring cameras for universal spectacles. Some have even developed weekly diaries to capture their daily breathing exercises. Others get their surrogates to extol their past contributions to the suffragettes, the emancipation of women from our draconian male dominated society.
We see the subtle suggestion of a gender war emerging as one of the potential battleground issues around which flagbearer contests will be fought. This is evident in both the APC and the SLPP as we see the theme of victimhood, the oppressed, the silenced and the voiceless slowly taking centre stage in political discourses. You sometimes get the feel that this is one of those “I have a Dream” for emancipation moments.
Interestingly, and at this stage, you would expect those hoping to be flagbearers to target and galvanise the number of delegates votes in their camp. The delegates are one of the most important cogs in the king- making process. However, there is nothing to suggest that potential flagbearers are not quietly harvesting the delegates for their respective camps.
Equally there is nothing to rule out that some delegates are giving their word, support and potential votes to more than one potential flagbearer or candidates for other positions. Does that mean that all those photo ops and large plebian rallies are useless at this stage? Does that mean that all the infighting and battles raging among political surrogates and spin doctors on social media count for nothing at this stage?
Though relatively irrelevant at this stage, would they become useful if those engaged in all these politicking eventually reaches the Holy Grail? If not, would they conveniently become part of the social media archives and relics as reference points.
Like the 2023 elections, the use of social media played a massive role in canvassing during the campaigns. It became the fastest and most accessible mode of communicating and connecting the politicians with their “subjects”.
Sadly, the same social media was central to all the controversies, lies, propaganda and incitements that marred the election cycle, as the subjects became mere objects to insult their intelligence with lies. There is no reason to believe that the same is not going to happen again.
What is scary this time is the novelty of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that are and will be readily available. No need to speculate on the potential of AI in social media circles.
If the lies, make believes, propaganda, set ups etc during the 2023 election cycle are anything to go by, one shudders to think about what an AI infested social media landscape would be like.
We saw people “shot” and wounded with “blood” streaming from their faces, only to be schooled on the wonders of how far Hollywood, Nollywood and Bollywood have come. We saw the other side manipulate videos to create messianic accomplishments about infrastructural developments that are still in the discussion stages after 72 months in power.
Unlike other social media tools like collaging, photoshops, photobombs, etc. today, ChatGPT and AI are among most of the media tools used to make extremely realistic images. Can you imagine what the campaign season would look like? I hasten to feel sorry for us all, the poor and sometimes gullible electorate.
Many of us would struggle to decipher truth from lies, fantasy from reality, and Hollywood from Sierrawood. Even with the keenest eye or supposed intellect, AI has the potential to fool anyone. Therefore, if the last election is anything to go by, the electorate is in for a bumpy ride on the deception highway.
With both parties gearing up to their respective Party Conferences to Nominate, Elect, Select or Choose (take your pick) their flagbearers, running mates and other positions of interest, the message coming from both parties is that the choice of flagbearers will be democratically made by MAJORITY VOTE BY THE DELEGATES.
This is good news coming from both parties. By this token, many of us would be hopeful that such democratically held exercises would provide the starting blocks, the baseline and foundations for the general elections that would follow in 2028.
Call me naïve but the optimist in some of us would be hopeful that some sense of democratic normalcy might be returning to our nation, after the aftershocks of 2023. It would reflect a sense of electoral justice that some people have been calling for and plausibly look natural that charity should begin at home.
If those elections are conducted on strong democratic platforms involving free, fair and peaceful elections, it would not be criminal to expect this to be projected on to the national canvas.
However, there is nothing wrong for potential candidates to engage in meet -the- people tours, splash the cash, do running commentaries on their daily routines, keep diaries or basically let the electorate know what the foxes have in mind for the chickens.
There is nothing wrong for wolves to promise that they would become vegetarians once they are elected to power. It is plausibly usual to build bridges where there are no rivers at this time of the campaign season. Nothing wrong with appointing Directors for railways that don’t exist, as long as it pleases some people. Why would you doubt if turkeys decide to vote for Christmas?
If the forest is shrinking but the trees keep voting for the axe, because the axe cleverly convinced them that since its handle is made of wood, it is one of them, you cannot legislate for such misplaced trust. It’s just a natural phenomenon of human gullibility and naivety.
Where does AI, ChatGPT and social media come into this?
With AI, ChatGPT and social media generally going through to another stratosphere, it is worth thinking about the potential controversies and political gymnastics lying in wait for the next election cycle. Talk of libels, defamation, disinformation, misinformation etc could potentially become the currency of the day.
So, where does the Cyber Crime Act comes in?
There has been talk of people invited as guests of the CID to explain social media posts in relation to the Act in the past. Social media needs to be regulated. Equally, the Act would need to be sanitised to avoid misuse. However, that is for another discussion for another day.
Stay tuned and don’t forget to turn the lights of when you leave the room.
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