By Allieu S. Tunkara
Allegations and counter allegations of thuggery is portraying APC (All People’s Congress) as a party no longer at ease. The party was lately thrown into fresh waves of thuggery and crisis after a new interim body was set up to take APC to a convention with Dr Conteh at the helm. The formation of the interim body came after a verdict was handed down by Justice Adrian Fischer sitting in the Appeals Court.
According to the verdict, close to 200 executive members including the Chairman and the Secretary-General, Ernest Bai Koroma And Foday Osman Yansaneh respectively should have no voting rights in the election for a new executive. Koroma and Yansaneh will however create the necessary conditions to usher in a new executive.
The order apparently did not go down well with the affected officials particularly the Secretary-General. His displeasure with the order is seen in his seeming non-compliance with the court order.
Many APC members are in doubt about how powerful Yansaneh is that he could defy court orders and do away with it.
However, the deadline, August 24 is yet to come. Dr Abdulai Conteh who many APCers look up to for redemption seems weary owing to age. The Previous Week, Dr Conteh and his 35-man committee members were denied entry into the party headquarters at Brookfields community in Freetown.
The committee was going to hold a meeting to discuss two issues: choosing a date for adopting the reviewed APC constitution, and addressing membership issues. Thugs were allegedly deployed at the party’s entrance to block Dr Conteh and his team.
The missioned was tactically accomplished as none of the committee members was allowed into the party office to transact business. Dr Abdulai Conteh, on several occasions, has been accused of doing the bid for the flag-bearership of Chief Sam Sumana, Sierra Leone’s former Vice President.
Yansaneh too was accused of bearing a hand in APC thuggery. The APC scribe allegedly deployed thugs at the APC gate to stop the committee members. When contacted, the Secretary-General rejected the allegations outright.
“I am not aware of any thuggery within the party,” Yansaneh told Nightwatch in a telephone interview. Yansaneh did not entertain further questions on the issue. Yansaneh is however known for insistently holding on to power even when time is up.
A credible source who does not want to be identified told this source that Yansaneh did the same thing in 2006 before APC went into elections in 2007. The stalemate has made APC standstill. No date has been announced for the aborted meeting.
“No headway, no business, no nothing,” the source told this press. The APC scribe also faces strong allegations to contend with. An APC member, Matilda Sowe wrote that “the Secretary-General has never won anything through the ballot box and that he is always intimidated by voting processes.
The fear of subjecting himself to the ballot box, Sowe went on, made the Secretary-General drag his feet to go to a convention to adopt a new constitution without a ‘Selection Clause.’
“The Secretary-General understands that once a constitution is adopted, he would become powerless, and his duties of supervising all forms of elections in the APC would be taken up by an organ created in the new constitution,” Sowe alleged.
Yansabeh, she said, still wanted to maintain his current post but not through the ballot box. “The only way to achieve his mission is to delay the process of adopting the new constitution so that the APC can revert to the old 1995 constitution which still has the ‘Selection Clause’ that will make Yansaneh anything he wants to be in APC prior to 2023,” she further alleged.
As the impasse lingers, perceptions of APC campaigning for SLPP (Sierra Leone People’s Party) for a second term could not be easily dismissed.
APC has still not adopted the reviewed constitution and addressed membership issues let alone held its lower level elections. Thinking about a convention for the election of a presidential candidate remains far-fetched.
Conversely, SLPP had put its house in order for months having held internal elections despite few incidents. The party is now set for a convention in which a presidential candidate will be elected for 2023 elections if everything remains normal.
As the storm brizzles, Dr Abdulai Conteh’s ability to captain during rough seas is constantly questioned. Dr Conteh is no stranger to the country’s politics particularly within the APC. Sowe makes a wonderful description of Dr Conteh.
Dr Conteh, according to Sowe, served as member of parliament representing Kambia district from 1977 to 1984. He also served as Minister of Finance, Attorney-General and Vice President. “Dr Abdulai Conteh is a politician who has made a mark in the politics of not only Sierra Leone but also other places around the world,” Sowe said.
Despite the fine literature on Dr Conteh’s political acumen, the APC situation is appears too tough for him.
He tries to cure old wounds in the party, and same time wrestles with allegations from different APC quarters. He is accused of attempting to hijack the party and imposing himself as interim chairman.
The attempted hijack, the allegation notes, is to back Chief Samuel Sam Sumana becomes APC’s next flag-bearer for 2023 elections. The allegation is also widely seen as a mockery to Dr Conteh and Chief Sam.
The derogatory phraseology of “Diamond Stars,” a way of referring to Chief Sam’s supporters is succinctly tribalistic. Sowe urged APC members not to tolerate tribalism within their ranks but to work towards the peace and unity of the party.
Despite calls for peace, the question for the meeting remains unanswered. APC is a party at crossroad and whether it would return to peace and unity is a wait-and-see affair.