By John Koroma
Ibrahim Kamara,a politician from Sierra Leone’s main opposition Party, the All People’s Congress that lost the March, 2018 Presidential and Parliamentary elections to the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party, has fled from Sierra Leone due to political harassment and intimidation from the ruling party.
Kamara who was the opposition party’s candidate for a Parliamentary seat in the East of Freetown, Constituency 116 in Sierra Leone’s March 2018 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, was deployed by the party as an agent at the stoutly contested parliamentary bye-elections in Constituency 110 in Goderich, West of Freetown on 24th August, 2019.
The said Parliamentary seat which was earlier won by the All People’s Congress became vacant when a High Court in Freetown ruled that, the elections that brought Hon. Kadie Davies of the APC to Parliament were marred with violence.
The High Court later ruled that, the National Electoral Commission holds a re-run of the elections on 24th August, 2019.
The said elections which saw the deployment of a joint military and Police security arrangement, ended in chaos with ruling party thugs openly destroying electoral materials. Top ruling party operatives and thugs were accused of having taken part in the violence but the local police failed to make any arrests.
The National Electoral Commission (NEC) cancelled the results of the polls claiming that, it had received seventy percent of the results and that the results for 10 other polling stations constituting 10% of the results were hugely affected in the violence and hence this would affect the announcement of any results.
The opposition APC, Civil Society Organizations and other rights groups, had criticized the government for cancelling the results and also for the violence that ensued at the close of polls which they say had involved key ruling party functionaries.
Several opposition party officials including the party’s Organizing Secretary, Karamoh Kabba and twenty-two others were arrested and detained and later charged with riotous conduct.
The Police in Sierra Leone also separately arrested and charged Kasho Joseph Holland Cole, Chairman for one of the country’s biggest District Councils and others also for the violence.
They were also charged with arson and other public order offences.
Kamara and a number of others were also declared wanted by the Police for Arson, Riotus Conduct, Malicious damage etc. while twenty-two others are currently undergoing trials at the High Court in Freetown.
Kamara reportedly left the jurisdiction in September, 2019 for Guinea.
Police had declared Ibrahim Kamara and many of his party colleagues who were in charge of the elections on behalf of their party (the APC), wanted on the allegations that they burnt down the house of Josephine Jackson, the SLPP candidate and also destroyed a number of her properties.
Police have ransacked the house of Kamara few days later and his family was harassed and detained for some weeks.Many have called the attacks on Kamara and his colleagues as politically motivated. Kamara was very pivotal in the political activities of the opposition which has a resounding majority in Freetown.
Many say Kamara was unnecessarily targeted by ruling party operatives because he is a very popular opposition politician loved by his people.
