By Ragan Conteh
Sierra Leoneans are continuing to ask the question whether Arata and his thugs really succeeded in getting the heavily deployed MAC-P to succumb to them ?
We are asking these questions against the backdrop that despite the heavily built-up security at constituency 110, thugs of the SLPP headed by Arata could attack and destroy voting materials at Sarah Modern Academy.
The Assistant Inspector General of Police, Elizabeth Turay and the leadership of the Police, have boastfully maintained to journalists past Friday that they would fully deploy over three hundred armed guards to ensure that the elections are peaceful and credible.
The Military, the Police said, would be on stand-by to respond to any issue that will disrupt the elections.
Such assurances were taken to mean that the Police would have prevented any chaos against the background that they have profiled constituency 110 as a vulnerable community to violence.
It was expected that the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for such elections should have taken into consideration political party thuggery and other issues of security concern.
Our reporters disclosed that they saw very high ranking officers of the Sierra Leone Police in the area including the Deputy Inspector General of Police, but alas how comes that Arata was able to attack and destroy a whole polling station that left us as a people wasting huge sums of monies as a result of the cancellation of such elections?
Where does this leave the assurances of the Police and the recently invoked MAC-P?
Are our security arrangements and the no-sense military now afraid of thugs like Arata from protecting peaceful citizens?
Why are they not talking about investigating and prosecuting Arata and whosever has caused this damage that has led to the cancellation of the elections?
The Sierra Leone Police needs to answer these questions.
The Military Aid to Civil Power (MAC-P) is normally invoked to handle extreme situations that pose threat to the peace and tranquility of Sierra Leone.