Sailing against the Wind: Maada Bio has Nothing to Gain from Naming a Running-Mate Now
Wednesday 12 October 2011
By  Kelfala M. Kallon
Culled from The New people Online

Since the nomination of Julius Maada Bio as the SLPP’s presidential candidate, we have been inundated with the conventional wisdom that he needs to name his running-mate now in order to bring order and unity to the campaign. Most recently, we were even told that supporters of Usman Boie Kamara had intimated to the National Chairman that Maada Bio must name Mr. Kamara as his running mate in order to reverse the resignations by his Western Area supporters from the region’s executive. I will get to this later!

Those who argue that Mr. Bio has anything to gain from naming a running-mate now obviously do not understand that politics is a strategic game. Hence, each side’s behavior must take into consideration the reaction of the other to that behavior. Thus, any precipitous behavior by one side gives valuable information about his/her strategies that the other could use to his/her advantage and to the disadvantage of the person that made the first move.

The following example will help to clarify this point. Suppose both Pa Lamina and Yappo sell poyo at a certain “Pote” that is frequented by 100 hundred customers. Let’s assume also that each seller has a dedicated customer base of 33 and the rest (34) have no brand loyalty. Suppose, also, that due to the increased “sufferism” that the APC have imposed on the land, both Yappo and Pa Lamina want to raise their price just so that they can continue to put food on their respective family tables. Now, suppose Yappo first raises the price of his poyo while Pa Lamina keeps his unchanged. The 34 people who had no brand loyalty to either seller would definitely switch to Pa Lamina because his poyo would now be relatively cheaper than Yappo’s. Moreover, many of Yappo’s loyal customers would likely be swayed by the lower relative price of Pa Lamina’s poyo to switch to his brand, all other things being equal. Hence, Yappo would lose market share (and perhaps even go out of business) by unilaterally being the first to raise his price. Similarly, any precipitous action by Pa Lamina that would put his poyo at a competitive disadvantage would cause him to lose market share. Therefore, unless and until both sellers collude to raise their prices by the same amount and at the same time, thus leaving their relative prices unchanged, neither side would have anything to gain from being the first to raise his price. This will be true even though both of them know that the price of poyo would have to rise to keep their families from starving. And even if collusion is possible, they might both refuse to cooperate even if it would be in their individual and collective interests because neither would want to be the first to bell the proverbial cat under the assumption that the other will not follow suit in order to secure a competitive advantage to himself. This possibility that two individuals might refuse to agree on a common strategy even though it would be in their interest to do so is known in Game Theory as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.

President Koroma and Julius Maada Bio can be said to be now in their own Prisoner’s Dilemma. Each side, I believe, is guaranteed the support of a third of the electorate. Hence, to win the elections, each must sway at least 51 percent of the remaining third to his side. Each also knows that the electorate is going to be primarily concerned about the fitness for office of the presidential candidate, not that of his running-mate. However, any precipitous action by one candidate—such as naming a running-mate that calls his judgment into question—can have a deleterious impact how people perceive his fitness for the presidency. Additionally, the naming of a running-mate by either candidate will give the other candidate very valuable information about his opponent’s electoral strategy. That information can then be used to the advantage of the candidate who out-waited his opponent. Therefore, just as Yappo and Pa Lamina have nothing to gain from unilaterally raising their respective prices, President Koroma and Maada Bio have nothing to gain from naming their running mates this early in the game.

In fact, because there is much rumor going around that President Koroma intends to drop Vice President Sam Sumana from the APC ticket this time around (so much so that the respective supporters of both his VEEP and his Interior Minister had a shootout in Kono), it makes sense for Maada Bio to wait for President Koroma to first name his running mate. The rumored removal of Vice President Sam Sumana from the APC ticket might just give Mr. Bio priceless information about the president’s strategy, on the one hand, and the dynamics of the Kono vote, on the other hand, especially if the respective supporters of the VEEP and the Interior Minister continue their public fight. Most importantly, the replacement of the VEEP with Musa Tarawallie, a man who seems to be involved in several acts of political violence that have occurred in the Southeast under the watchful eyes of President Koroma, will give the electorate valuable information about the President’s general judgment.

In the meantime, Mr. Bio’s first order of business is to go around the country so that the voters get to know him—as the perfect gentlemen most of us know him to be. Because, in the final analysis, the electorate is going to be primarily concerned with his fitness for the presidency, not that of his running-mate, such a get-to-meet the people tour will yield better dividends for the campaign than Mr. Bio unilaterally showing his game plan to his opponent by rushing to name a running-mate. Thus, it is to the SLPP’s advantage to take up the issue of the unconstitutional police ban Mr. Bio’s activities in both the courts of law and public opinion, including the International Community.
And as the Kelvin Lewis Commission’s Report has confirmed, it was not Maada Bio’s Thank-the-People Tour that caused the Bo incident: It was simply caused by the sense of impunity that President Koroma has imbued in APC supporters that they can attack the SLPP and their supporters at will. This was complemented by the failure of the Police to accord Mr. Bio the constitutionally-mandated protection to which every Sierra Leonean is entitled. Consequently, unconstitutionally depriving law-abiding Sierra Leoneans of their constitutional rights of association and to free speech, as the Police have done, will not prevent the problem from recurring once the ban is lifted. On the contrary, it will only provide incentives for APC supporters to engage in violence whenever the ban is lifted so that another ban would be placed on the SLPP candidate’s activities. It is therefore quite proper for the SLPP to challenge the ban in the courts.

Maada Bio’s next major task is to do all he can to unite the party. While doing this, he must be careful to not yield to the sort of blackmail that Mr. Usman Boie Kamara’s supporters are unfortunately peddling. Certainly, because political parties are by and large voluntary civic organizations that are formed for the sole purpose of gaining and maintaining power, no one should be coerced into joining or remaining in a political party. Nor should they be forced to hold positions in such organizations if they believe that they cannot perform their duties effectively. On the contrary, people should be members of a political party because they believe in its ideology or because of its past performance. Thus, I respect the right of those members of the Party’s Western Area Executive who resigned because they believe that they cannot perform their duties to the party for whatever reason. And even before Mr. Boie’s supporters who recently met with the National Chairman spilled the beans, I believed that those resignations by the Western Area executives were motivated simply by their spiteful animus at Maada Bio’s nomination, not because of the “marginalization” red herring that they threw out. That Mr. Kamara’s supporters are now using those resignations as an instrument of blackmail to get him selected as Mr. Bio’s running-mate is, in my personal view, disgusting.

It is also extremely important for Mr. Bio to reach out to party members in the Diaspora and to make them feel that they matter to the party at home at all times, not only when the party needs their money. Obviously, because many of us in the Diaspora are not allowed to vote in Sierra Leone elections, our greatest impact on the party’s electoral fortunes are in fund-raising and also enabling our “home-based” relatives and friends, many of whom depend on our financial remittances to survive in President Koroma’s “Land of Sufferism”, to campaign and vote for the party’s candidates. And, although ours is a labor of love, the energy and enthusiasm that we bring to the task is likely to be directly related to how appreciated we feel our efforts are by those on the ground. It is therefore vitally important that Mr. Bio gets in touch with all elected party executives of the Diaspora branches (if he has not already done so) to not only thank them for everything their branches have done for the party in the past but, more importantly, to also hang heads with them about ways of making us do even more for the party at this crucial time.

I now return to the other conventional wisdom that Maada Bio must select Usman Boie Kamara as his running-mate because he scored the second highest votes in the flag-bearer election. Those who hold this view fail to realize that the suffrage in the nominating convention was limited to only delegates, people who had been elected to their positions by a handful of party activists in the various regions, while the suffrage for the presidential election will be universal. Because the former is a restricted franchise, one’s success in it or lack thereof does not provide infallible proof of one’s success or lack thereof in the latter. Moreover, when the delegates cast their votes, they considered only one issue—the person they thought should be the presidential candidate, not which two people they believed should be on the ticket. Perhaps if they had been tasked with picking both the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, they would not have chosen Mr. Kamara to be Mr. Bio’s running-mate. Such a conclusion is especially reasonable given the acerbic dynamic that played out between the supporters of Messrs. Bio and Kamara during the flag-bearer contest. Instead, the delegates might have chosen someone that they believed would work with Mr. Bio, not only during the campaign but also throughout his eventual presidency.

Also, economics teaches us that sunk costs are irrelevant to current and future decisions. Simply put, this means that bygones are indeed bygones. In the present case, it means that the vote tallies of July 31-August 1, 2011 were simply an individual experiment about who a plurality of the delegates thought at that time most fit to be the SLPP’s presidential nominee. It is therefore just a data point—a bygone, if you will. Hence, all conventional wisdom aside, simple logic should tell us that it would be sheer folly to make any prognostications about which SLPP member will add the most value to the ticket from just that data point.

Obviously, Mr. Bio should consider all the other aspirants for the nomination in the selection of his running-mate. However, dataset must not be limited to only that group. He should also consider all other members of the SLPP who he believes can add value to the ticket—in especially the Northern Province and the Western Area and can work with him to launch an effective campaign to unseat a wily incumbent, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, also be a very effective member of the governing team once elected.

Lastly, I must admit that I surprised even myself (and angered many a friend and relative in the process) when, prior to the convention, I threw my support for Dr. Kadi Sesay’s candidacy for the party’s nomination. My reasoning then was that she had the best chance of: 1) making us competitive in the North; 2) giving the SLPP a gender advantage among the largest voting bloc in the country—the female voters; and 3) softening the face of the SLPP in the eyes of the International Community. This third reason would have made it easier for the party to get funding from foundations and organizations in the West (especially the Nordic countries) that are promoting female leadership in Africa. (Mrs. Sirleaf-Johnson’s recent Nobel Peace Prize, even though she was an early but brief convert to Charles Taylor’s war, tells me that I was probably on the right track with respect to the funding argument.) I still believe that the impact of an accomplished woman of Northern origin would be greatest on our party’s electoral chances relative to that of any other running-mate configuration. I also believe that such a running-mate, be she Dr. Sesay or someone else, will add optimal value to Maada Bio’s ticket only if Mr. Bio waits for President Koroma to resolve his rumored running-mate conundrum before naming his own running mate. Obviously, in the interest of nipping the bad blood that his rumored desire to ditch his VEEP has generated in the bud, the President has more to lose by dragging out the selection of his running mate. In other words, I will sail once again against the wind and suggest that Maada Bio has nothing to gain by naming a running-mate ahead of President Koroma, conventional wisdom notwithstanding.