In SLPP (Sierra Leone People’s Party) gatherings, President Julius Maada Bio would inform his comrades that he would go unopposed in June 24, 2023 elections. His wife, First Lady, Fatima Bio also used to make similar utterances that her husband would go as President unchallenged in the coming elections.
Such statements go a long way to thrill SLPP members and supporters as they hope that Bio would continue his presidency after 2023 and beyond. On other occasions, the President would emphasise that he would not hand over power to a civilian any longer. Bio’s statements implied that he made a mistake when he handed over power to President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in 1996. Nobody knew what the President and his wife meant when they made these statements.
But, observers in the public and the media came to realise that the only way the President would achieve the political objective is to hold APC (All People’s Congress) to ransom by using the judiciary and the police.
To help the President realise his dream, the two law enforcement institutions would leave no avenue unexplored to ensure that APC is disarray.
Once the party is in crisis, he would constantly engage the international community that APC is not ready for leadership. It came to pass as the judiciary and the police constantly imposed restrictions on the APC to delay internal politicking in the party. The latest was an injunction slammed on APC’s convention in the northern capital of Makeni. The temporal ban was announced by Justice Hannah Bonnie when an APC member, Francis Kai Gbondo dragged the party to court. The reason for the court’s action was not clear.
However, official sources indicated that the petition was based on the grounds that those whose names were on the “White Paper” are not eligible to contest. The White Paper is a government’s response to recommendations made by the defunct Commissions of Inquiry led by the Nigerian judge, Biobele Georgewill. Others say it was the absence of Chief Sam Sumana’s name on the list of flag-bearer aspirants that prompted the legal action.
A court record seen by this press contains names of top APC officials including former President Ernest Bai Koroma. Heavily armed policemen barricaded the APC office in Makeni to render it a no-go area.
No business would have been transacted had the court order remained intact. It became a great surprise to Sierra Leoneans when Justice Bonnie withdrew the injunction prompting the police to abandon the party office. Bonnie’s action was amazing since Justice Adrian Fisher had been presiding over almost all APC matters all along. Everybody expected that Fisher should be the only judge that should handle APC’s affairs.
The withdrawal of the court order prompted several debates pointing accusing fingers at the diplomatic community’s involvement in the country’s politics. Others bashed at former President Ernest Bai Koroma as the man who drew the attention of the international community to the injunction. The case will come up even after APC’s convention, sources say.
Justice Bonnie’s court order followed a widely controversial verdict handed down by the country’s Supreme Court on the Proportional Representation (PR) otherwise known as the District Block System. Although circumstances for a PR mode of elections do not exist as argued Dr Abdulai Osman Conteh, the court’s verdict favoured government, raising local and international criticisms.
Dr Conteh who is one of Africa’s most respected lawyers, is one of the framers of Sierra Leone’s 1991 Constitution whose amended section contains the PR provision. Despite what many described as a brilliant argument, Conteh was disappointed as the court’s verdict was a disfavour to him.
‘It is a sad day for the rule of law in Sierra Leone, and I wish there was another court,’ Dr Conteh vented out his frustration. To many Sierra Leoneans, the PR system is a clandestine rigging tactic, a reason that explains why SLPP is bent on it at all cost and against all odds.
Sierra Leoneans witnessed Bio’s first manipulation of the judiciary which started when 16 APC parliamentarians were restrained by the courts from taking part in the election of the Speaker of Parliament.
The court’s injunction on APC parliamentarians came after petitions were filed by SLPP parliamentary contenders in the 2018 elections. APC parliamentarians were brutalised on the orders of the Clerk of Parliament to water down their zeal to take part in the day’s proceedings. Honourable Mohamed Bangura who represents a constituency in Karene district in Northern Sierra Leone was a key victim of police brutality in Parliament.
He sought medical treatment after an uneasy encounter with the police when he attempted to vote in the speaker’s election. Petitions filed by APC parliamentarians were never honoured by the court.
The Chief Justice empanelled no judges to look into petitions filed by the main opposition. The public raised large eye-brows on such lack of neutrality on the part of the judiciary. For years, the people never trusted the courts as independent dispenser of justice in the land, a principal cause for mob justice.
As if that was not enough, the courts went at greater lengths to please President Bio when 10 APC parliamentarians were removed from Parliament albeit arbitrarily.
Provisions of the Public Elections Act, 2012 were blatantly flouted to ensure that SLPP got the majority in Parliament. The law in question provides that where a petition holds, the presiding judge should order a re-run.
It never happened in APC’s case. 10 SLPP runners-up in the 2018 parliamentary elections were sworn in as parliamentarians. Appeals were never permitted, and the SLPP parliamentarians hit the ground running on the day they were sworn in. Many say it was a clear travesty of justice. APC members were silenced on that day and their movements kept in check by heavy police and military presence on the streets.
None was permitted to protest the verdict as the police were set for a crackdown. APC members were confined in their party premises where they sang the party’s songs. The singers were taken aback when trigger-happy police officers embarked on a shooting spree at unarmed and defenceless civilians. Top APC executive officials were put under threat by the barrel of the gun.
The shooting, reliable sources said was sanctioned by police high command, an operation that was widely seen as one of the greatest policing disasters in the country’s recent history.
No government official showed remorse over the calamity that befell APC on the fateful day. The brutal police action at APC headquarters marked the genesis of other serial police killings in several towns and villages in the North-West regions, areas considered as opposition strongholds.
The killings were acts of terror and horror to shut down the APC. The question of how the police came to be relegated to a tool of terror and oppression in a democratic order still lingers. In spite of APC’s struggles in the hands of the ruling party, national party officers have been elected including a flag-bearer. Will President Bio continue to mislead the international community that APC is not ready to govern?