In their disarray and attempts to stifle or cloud the advocacy of their party leader, disgruntle and unfaithful members of the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) have become surrogates of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) and have in effect endorsed the president’s 2028 electoral cycle agenda thereby also endorsing his 2023 presidential victory that has been widely discredited as fraudulent and lacking the mathematical consistency for him to have won on the first ballot.
Presently there is a serious infighting taking place that has pitted APC executive members and supporters against APC executives and supporters led by their political godfathers and mothers representing the various camps or factions within the APC.
For those that are against the fight to restore sanity to our electoral process and return and restore stolen and uncounted votes, they see the party leader’s prospects as futile and in their open consideration of the ruling party’s 2028 election cycle agenda have openly and in veiled attempts been calling on Dr. Samura Kamara to let bygones be bygones and give up the tripartite process.
And with the United Nations representative’s lukewarm response to demands for the international community’s response or answer to the Tripartite Committee report, which report will deal with the electoral justice aspect of the tripartite process and provides answers to the extant questions of who really won the June 24, 2023 presidential election and who is guilty of manipulating the result to give the incumbent an unfair edge in the polls, many APC executives have been allegedly sleeping with the enemy for pittance.
There is widespread belief that many of the APC executives because of their expected time in the political and financial wilderness have been experiencing financial difficulties and as such have shamefully crossed over to the ruling party camp for which many of them are alleged to have received huge sums of money for which they feel beholden to the SLPP, but especially so to the party leader in the person of the president and his agenda going forward.
Even bloggers associated with the party have been accused of being paid to foment discord and vitriol within the APC rank and file to further destabilise the party.
For the money they have allegedly received from the president, his party, and possibly his government, the APC executives are expected to work as there is no work for an idler or lazy man in the ruling party government.
Speaking to sources in the divided APC executive many of them have surprisingly praised president Julius Maada Bio for his outsmarting of the APC and for his strategy getting the APC MPs and councillors to return and take their places in the Sixth Parliament and the city and town councils across the country.
It must be noted that despite their return the MPs and others were not paid the backlog pay as agreed and expected based on the communiqué from the brokered peace conference that not only resulted to their return to do the people’s work in the Sixth Parliament but also led to the formation of the Tripartite Committee.
Our sources say Mr Bio is in his right for not paying the returning APC MPs and others because he would have been paying people for a job they hadn’t done, adding that the president couldn’t have paid them from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) in breach of the Constitution and would have had to pay them from his pockets, for which they don’t think the man of strategy would have done.
‘These executives collected now they will have to pay. You can see that president Bio has already outsmarted the APC again. The plan of the SLPP and president Bio is to destabilise the APC and throw them into confusion. The ruling party planned this present situation in the APC where everyone is speaking out for his camp’s interests. They have implemented it by giving these guys money and they fell for the bait. And we all know that those who are preaching the 2028 agenda and hinting for Dr. Samura Kamara to give up on restoring the stolen presidential election back to him, the rightful winner, are all on the SLPP payroll because they cannot stand “suck air”. The “suck air” has made them desperate and will do anything for the money. They will even sell out their families, friends, and children when they are desperate for money,’ our sources in the APC executive intimated this medium.
For this reason our source advised for bloggers associated with the APC to ‘either put up, or shut up!’
The party stalwarts accused the bloggers of spreading discord and dissention within the party. They say the disunity in the party is being fanned into flames by reckless bloggers who allow their platforms to be abused and misused by unscrupulous partisans.
‘These bloggers spread division within the party by encouraging it. They allow certain politicians to use them to spread false and misleading information about their political opponents or rivals. By allowing this these bloggers are being used to arm the opposition with information on our members in case of an interparty election,’ informed the senior members of the APC.
They said blogging was supposed to be a blessing to the party as the internet is the final frontier for information dissemination on a massive scale, adding that the internet can be used to send massive amount of information in real time as opposed via radio or electronic (newspaper).
‘The added appeal to spreading info on the internet as opposed to radio is that while not everyone will have access to an actual radio set in this age of mobile phone technology everyone is expected to have a mobile phone. Besides modern phones come with radio apps where avid radio listeners can still have access,’ the strong APC members informed.
The men related that instead of being used by aspiring and standing politicians to divide the party, bloggers identifying with the APC should instead focus on spreading a positive image of the party, ‘and not only to spread their sponsors’ messages. It is their responsibility to promote the best interest of the party,’ they added.
The ranking APC executives said it is totally understandable for bloggers to have candidates they support with regards intraparty politics. However, after the votes for party positions and others have been cast and tallied, these bloggers are expected to encourage the losing partisan to think about the interest of the party and call the victor to congratulate him or her. They are advised to impress it on the winning party candidate to work with the losing member in the interest of their constituents and the party.
‘But instead of doing this these social media misfits find it necessary to spread all kinds of misleading information on others by allowing their candidates to use them to fight people within the party. This is creating embarrassment for the party online. True APC bloggers would expose and so discourage those who are trying to cause and maintain divisions within the party. It is as if they are trying to separate the party,’ said the upset APC members.
The opposition politicians say that the bloggers are encouraged by what they called ‘the brown envelop culture’ where money becomes the motive for what they share or post on their blogging sites.
‘Money is the main motivating factor for these bloggers allowing these so-called APC politicians to use them to foment division within the party. The rise of citizen journalism was supposed to be a blessing to political parties. We want bloggers associated with the APC to either, put up and tow the party line on unity within the party, or shut up and so save the party the embarrassment and time to dispel some of the lies they have spurned online,’ the men recommended.
The “brown envelop culture” and “suck air”, the APC members went on, is killing the party’s image and chances of restoring the stolen June 2023 presidential mandate. All the ruling party government is doing now to get inside information on party leaders is for them to go online and read some of the disparaging and libellous materials these bloggers publish on their own partisans at the behest of others within the party to get a lead on the APC candidate.
‘Such politicians use people including the very bloggers for their own agenda. They have no interest in why the blogger set up his or her blog, just as long as they can spread their vitriol no matter if it affects the party’s overall chances, or the blogger’s reputation and standing within the party and the media landscape. Bloggers take money from the highest bidder,’ the APC executives related.
The APC members informed that for national elections desperate and unfaithful APC bloggers take money from the opposition SLPP because their candidates didn’t win the intraparty election.
‘This way during national elections the SLPP uses them to pass wrong information to the public about the party or our candidate. By allowing for such things to happen our APC bloggers confuse the people in and outside the party as to what the party’s real stance is on issues of national importance as they spread contradictory messages on their sites,’ the APC faithful informed this medium.
The APC stalwarts are therefore advising ‘the true APC bloggers’ to rally behind the party and discourage those among them that will want to spread discord within the party to cease and desist, all in the interest of the party, the people and nation.
They also call on their fellow APC executives who are in the employ of the SLPP to stop their activities that are bringing the party into disrepute and attempting to stop the party’s efforts to either have a rerun of the June 2023 election or have Dr Samura declared the actual winner of the 2023 presidential election.
‘We have to put an immediate stop to all bloggers who report negative message about the party or political hopefuls or established politicians. We also have to stop our executives who have crossed over from advancing the SLPP agenda within the APC. Their activity is not good for the image of the party as they spread disunity in the party. APC needs to go back to the drawing board. These politicians using bloggers to divide the party via misinformation, if they have any love for the party, will call their bloggers to order,’ advised the ranking APC politicians.