Category: Opinions

The rule of law must remain supreme, before, during, and after elections.

Freetown, 2nd February 2026-Sierra Leone and China are thousands of miles apart, but I have a special connection with Sierra Leone. A month ago, I set foot on this beautiful land for the fourth time. Unlike my previous three visits to Sierra Leone from 2005 to 2010, this time, as the ambassador to Sierra Leone, I came to Freetown again and deeply felt “three changes” and “three no changes”.

The Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana once warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For Sierra Leone, more than two decades after the end of our civil war, President Julius Maada Bio has given that warning practical meaning by finally and formally deciding that we must remember.

The dirty secret of development is that it is never neutral and it is never painless. Every serious attempt at national transformation threatens someone’s power, privilege, or access to resources. That is why development so often stalls, not for lack of ideas, plans, or rhetoric, but for lack of political courage.