The tripartite Election Investigation Committee should comprise 21 officials if Resolution-3 of the peace communique is strictly complied.
7 should represent the main opposition, All People’s Congress (APC), 7 from the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and 7 to represent the Development Partners, and each group must select their own chairman, but the manner in which they arrive at decisions yet remains unclear.
However, any act contrary to the said resolution would balloon the figure beyond imagination, and that is the road the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) seems to be treading.
Instead of 21 the figure has surprisingly shot up as a huge number of moral guarantors have been injected into the EIC composition.
Civil society organisations, Inter-Religious Council (IRC), paramount chiefs, and other entities that Sierra Leoneans say would back the ruling party when a crucial decision is to be taken through votes.
Activists, right campaigners and the main religious body recently came under intense criticisms for their alliance with the ruling party as they turn blind eye at outrageous human rights abuse through massive killings, unlawful and indiscriminate arrest of peaceful citizens, terror campaigns and the creation of a police state.
Therefore, their inclusion into the EIC is a dangerous move, and they are sure to vote in favour of the ruling party so that Bio could have another five more years to go.
Government’s action however has caused public backlash with the people saying “such move would not work” and they are anxious about seeing the back of President Julius Maada Bio out of State House.
Violation of the communique did not start today; it began about a month ago when President Julius Maada Bio failed to address the country at the appropriate time not until he was placed under pressure.
The President has also failed to release prisoners detained for election and protest offences and also yet to resettle those driven out of their communities owing to state-sponsored political violence and intimidation as demanded by the communique.
Information filtering through the public also holds that Bio would never endorse a rerun recommendation which might affect his political existence.
Thugs linked to the ruling party say there is no talk about a rerun as Bio would continue to rule till 2028 and even beyond.
Political machinations to ensure an SLPP rule after 2028 are being worked out and tampering with the 1991 Constitution is one of the surest methods.
A credible source within SLPP has intimated this press that Bio is fighting hard to extend the five-year term constitutional clause to seven years and may also make it limitless so that any aspirant including an incumbent candidate could contest.
If it goes as planned, Bio will rule for another seven years and can also contest as far as it pleases him, a move that can even transform Sierra Leone into a one-party state.
Looking back at the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, a period that marked tight leadership of Sierra Leone under Siaka Probyn Stevens, Bio’s henchmen usually threaten that SLPP government will remain in power as a form of retaliation even when contemporary governance systems do not not favour such political maneuvering.
It is an axiom that yesterday will never be today and today will never be tomorrow. What has been relegated to history should remain in the history books, and a dictator will never flourish in the 21st century.
The 60s on to the 90s marked the darkest moments in Africa when tyranny reigned on the continent including the most brutal dictator, Idi Amin of Uganda although states were metamorphosing into democracies.
In the Mano River basin, President Sekou Toure of Guinea was merely tightening his hold on power in the same way William Tolbert of Liberia was doing.
President Siaka Stevens was also pursuing political strategies to safeguard his political project in Sierra Leone, but such autocratic states did not end well as the leaders were pursued by their own army to democratise and take back their countries.
Tolbert was kicked out of office by Samuel Kayon Doe, while the Gunean President was succeeded by General Lansana Conteh while Sierra Leone’s seat of power was overrun by young army officers on 29th April, 1992.
Those days represented a period of political thuggery, warlordism, coups and bloody revolutions on the continent and may those days never come again.
Many argue that the people of Sierra Leone should disown and resist those who may try to bring back those days.
The people’s last hope is built in the APC, but fragmentation and campism is weakening a party that should be the voice of the people.
Owing to disunity, APC is politically weaker than everything even when the Election Investigation Committee which signals the party’s last hope is about to commence their investigation.
If APC fails to score a goal this time it could not be divorced from the intra-APC opposing forces as created by the party’s flag-bearer aspirants who are still armed and ready to fight at any time.
Former Vice President, Chief Sam Sumana, and ex-ministers, Alimamy Petito Koroma, kemo Sesay, Alfred Paolo Conteh, Richard Conteh, Dr Kelfala Marrah and others have different camps fighting against each other for supremacy, but the main target has always been Dr Samura Kamara, APC’s current flag-bearer and presidential candidate.
The renegades, Alpha Kanu and Victor Bockarie Foh who have left the party also have camps and cabals that attack each other with Samura Kamara as the key target again.
Even when concerned Sierra Leoneans rain critical comments on the composition of the EIC, staunch and grassroot APC politicians keep on reminding the party’s presidential candidate that his time will be up in December, this year citing provisions of the new APC Constitution.
According to APC’s reviewed constitution, a presidential candidate shall vacate his office within six months if he fails to win an election, and there is no provision that provides a caveat about a situation in which an election is rigged no matter how naked the rigging is.
The move for Samura Kamara to step down next month is gathering pace within the APC as the EIC prepares to start its work.
Apparently, t is an opportunity that Bio would greatly exploit to get Kamara out of the race although it could be no pushover as he thought it to be.
Bio has used the judiciary, the police and the army, Political Parties Regulation Commission and other institutions to hit Kamara hard but has failed in such attempts.
The only weapon in the hands of Bio is to trigger debates about the APC Constitution particularly the provision that relates to the tenure of the party’s leader and presidential candidate.
Sources say APC’s lawyers are being engaged to explore ways of tampering with party’s constitution to Kamara’s disfavour. A very senior APC lawyer who once advised the party to go court immediately they lost the election has been accused of holding secret meetings to do Bio’s bidding.
The legal luminary, according to sources, made that advice to legitimise Bio’s victory knowing fully well that APC would lose the case, but wise leadership kept the party away from Bio’s judges.
But, counter-threats from the Samura camp, probably the biggest within the party are not infrequent, a move that sends a loud and clear message to the world that the dust has not settled within APC.
A potent pressure group, the National Reformation Council also should not be ignored as their elements are still active within the party, and currently triggering a debate for another election in 2028 only for Samura to get out of the political stage.