Breaking the politics of moral equivalence in Sierra Leone – Op ed

Oumar Farouk Sesay: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 11 July 2026:

The APC–SLPP rivalry has become more than a contest for political power. Over time, it has hardened into a national habit of thought – a lens through which many citizens interpret public events, defend government decisions, assign blame, and even determine what they are prepared to accept as truth.

In a healthy democracy, political parties compete on ideas, records, priorities, and visions for the future. Citizens may disagree fiercely while remaining united by a common standard: public decisions must ultimately be judged by whether they serve the country.

But in Sierra Leone, partisan loyalty too often takes precedence over public reasoning. The identity of the actor begins to matter more than the quality of the action. A policy praised under one party may be condemned under another. A failure denounced in opposition may be defended in government.

Principles become flexible, outrage becomes selective, and accountability shifts colour whenever power changes hands.

The cost of this culture is higher than the cost of political noise. It weakens institutions by making scrutiny conditional. It lowers the standard of leadership by allowing governments to justify current choices by pointing to their predecessors’ failures.

It divides citizens into rival camps, often more committed to protecting party reputations than to safeguarding the public interest. And while the political contest continues, ordinary Sierra Leoneans bear the consequences in lost opportunities, weakened services, delayed development, and deferred hopes.

At the heart of this problem lies what may be called the politics of moral equivalence: the habit of defending today’s wrongs by pointing to yesterday’s wrongs and treating past wrongdoing as a license for present wrongdoing.

Instead of asking whether a decision is wise, necessary, affordable, transparent, or beneficial, we ask whether the opposing party once did something similar.

The argument is no longer “This policy is right.” It becomes “They did it too.”

History, instead of serving as a teacher, is recruited as a defence lawyer. This is not merely poor politics. It is a failure of moral reasoning.

An earlier wrong does not make a present wrong less serious. A bad decision does not acquire legitimacy because it has a precedent. Two mistakes do not become wisdom simply because rival parties committed them.

Yet this logic has become deeply embedded in Sierra Leone’s political culture.

When one side is criticized, its supporters search the archives for an equivalent failure by the other. Every accusation is met with a counter-accusation. Every present concern is redirected toward an old grievance.

The goal is no longer to determine what is right. It is to prove first that the other side was wrong.

This weakens accountability by confusing explanation with justification.

Historical comparison can be useful. It can expose hypocrisy, reveal patterns, test consistency, and help citizens understand how past decisions have shaped present conditions. But comparison becomes dangerous when precedent is treated as a form of absolution.

The fact that another government made a similar decision may raise legitimate questions about consistency, but it does not settle the merits of the decision now before us.

A critic may be hypocritical and still be correct. A government may expose an opposition party’s inconsistency and still fail to justify its own policy. The character of the messenger cannot replace examination of the message.

This principle matters whenever governments undertake major national projects.

The debate over the newly constructed ECOWAS Conference Centre in Lungi, has at times drawn comparisons to Sierra Leone’s hosting of the 1980 OAU Summit. That history may offer useful lessons, but it should neither automatically validate nor condemn a present-day project.

The proper questions remain straightforward: Does the project address a genuine national need?

Are its expected benefits credible? What will it cost, and what are the opportunity costs? Will it remain useful long after the event that inspired it?

Could the same resources produce greater benefits in healthcare, education, energy, agriculture, water, or employment?

These are not APC questions. They are not SLPP questions. They are the disciplines of responsible governance.

A sound policy must be defended with evidence, not ancestry. It should stand on its own necessity, affordability, transparency, long-term value, and expected benefits to the public.

Why, then, does moral equivalence remain so powerful?

For many citizens, political parties are more than organizations. They are tied to identity, family history, region, community, opportunity, grievance, and belonging.

Under such conditions, criticism of a party can feel like criticism of the individual. Admitting that one’s preferred government is wrong may feel like surrendering an advantage to political opponents.

So, people demand accountability from the other side while showing loyalty to their own. We become prosecutors when our opponents are in power and defence lawyers when our allies govern.

The same action acquires a different moral meaning depending on the party behind it.

But democracy demands a more difficult form of loyalty. True loyalty to a country is not the willingness to defend one’s party under every circumstance. It is the willingness to hold one’s own party to the same standards one demands from its opponents.

Anyone can condemn wrongdoing by the other side. The harder test is whether we can condemn the same wrongdoing when our own party commits it.

Every citizen should ask: Would I defend this decision if the other party had made it? If the answer is no, our judgment may be partisan rather than principled.

Sierra Leone has already paid dearly for normalizing governance failures.

Nations rarely decline because of one catastrophic decision. More often, they weaken through the steady accumulation of avoidable mistakes – each explained away, defended, inherited, or repeated.

One government points to the failures of its predecessor. The next point back. Meanwhile, the mistake survives them both.

Breaking the politics of moral equivalence, therefore, requires more than changing governments. It requires changing the syntax of public debate. Citizens must judge policies by their merits rather than by the identities of those proposing them.

Governments must defend decisions with evidence rather than partisan comparisons. Opposition parties must criticize on principle rather than practice reciprocal outrage.

The media, civil society, scholars, and political commentators must resist the temptation to become archivists of partisan vindication and instead act as custodians of public reason.

A mature democracy is not one in which governments never make mistakes. Error is inevitable.

A mature democracy is one in which every administration is expected to exercise better judgment than its predecessor—not inherit its failures, recycle its excuses, or use its worst decisions as a benchmark.

The responsibility of the present is not to prove that the past was equally guilty. It is to do better.

Until Sierra Leone breaks free from the politics of moral equivalence, the country will remain trapped in a weary cycle: every government borrowing yesterday’s excuses, every opposition rehearsing yesterday’s grievances, and every generation inheriting yesterday’s disappointments. (Photo: Author – Oumar Farouk Sesay).

The measure of national progress is not whether my wrong is better than yours. It is whether we possess the honesty to call a wrong, a wrong, regardless of who commits it; the courage to correct it, even when our own side commits it; and the wisdom to ensure that history becomes our teacher rather than our accomplice.

Sierra Leone will not deepen accountability until citizens stop judging wrongs by party colour and begin judging them by principle.