As the struggle continues to get to the bottom of the political impasse that has gripped Sierra Leone since the chief electoral commissioner of the electoral commission of Sierra Leone announced the incumbent candidate as the winner, the grassroots citizens that spoke to this medium say they believe that both political giants, the All Peoples Congress (APC) and the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) are playing games as they continue to deceive and confuse the people.
There is a South African maxim that says ‘when two elephants fight, only the grass suffers’. This is the situation many grassroots people that spoke to nightwatch say we the people find ourselves: while the two political powers in the country continue to fight, the people in the main continue to suffer as their issues remain unresolved defined by severe suffering and avoidable hardships.
The aggrieved Sierra Leoneans say despite the yearlong electoral stalemate, the heads of the two party giants and their key supporters continue on in their financial and social statuses as well to do people while the majority of the citizens of the country regardless of who they support continue to wallow in the mud and mire of economic and social poverty.
The young Sierra Leoneans say they have been misled by both political parties by their claims, counterclaims and denials that still leave the real issue of how the voting took place on June 24, 2023 unresolved.
Although the Tripartite Committee has submitted the long awaited report, the grassroots members who say they don’t belong to either side of the political, regional or tribal divide that defines Sierra Leone politics, say they still fail to see any change in the makeup of the government for them to be convinced that something was achieved by the tripartite process and that the points of contention between the two political heavyweights, in the words of Dr. Samura Kamara, have been ‘done and dusted’.
Whenever the leaders or key executive members of both parties speak, the people say they are still left in the dark as what they hope to hear is still not being addressed as their hopes are being pushed from pillar to post thereby leaving them confused as to what is really going on behind closed doors.
The active young business people narrated several statements and actions from the contending parties that they say are either contradictory or hopeful in resolving who the actual winner of the June 2023 presidential election is without viewing or seeing the disaggregated voting data per polling station from across the country.
‘According to the ruling party government, the 2023 presidential election is a thing of the past. The issue according to the SLPP and president Bio led government had long been resolved since the announcement of the chief electoral commissioner Mohamed Konneh that Julius Maada Bio won the people’s mandate. The Maada Bio administration has no problem or contention with what Konneh announced and has been operating on that mandate since Bio was sworn in as president. For them they have their eyes set on 2028 as the next cycle for the presidential election,’ said a youthful trader at Congo Market in Freetown.
The Sierra Leoneans said the problem with the ruling party government’s and leader’s statement is that it is a complete U-turn from what the president had been saying since the APC and others rejected the announced result that he will and can defeat Dr. Samura Kamara if another election was declared.
However, sources say after president Julius Maada Bio was apprised of his low opinion rating among the people, he started saying, even while the Tripartite Committee was still actively engaged in their work, that the next election cycle is slated for 2028. It must be recalled that the new minister of information and civic education, Chernor Bah, was the first to state the ruling party government’s position on the 2028 cycle, which mantra was soon picked up by the head of state.
‘To the president, the government and the electoral commission’s disservice they have all failed to show conclusive evidence to convince anyone that the president had won the votes conferred on him by the electoral commission. Despite repeated calls from the main opposition, the international community and we the voters and people of Sierra Leone, the ruling party government and the president remain quiet and completely avoid joining the rest of the world in demanding that the ECSL release the demanded voting data aimed at clarifying or qualifying the president’s win. If the president cares for the people and country he would have joined all of us to show how he won our mandate,’ said a female member of the group.
To make matters worse, the lady said on several occasions the ruling party leader and chairman in the persons of the president Julius Maada Bio and Dr. Prince Harding respectively have both stated that the SLPP will never hand power over to the APC.
‘People across this country have interpreted that the meaning of this pronouncement is that no matter how the votes pan out now or in the future, that even if the APC wins the presidential election, the SLPP will not hand power over back to the APC. Looking at how the June 24, 2023 presidential election issue is still going on, we see that the SLPP is staying true to their word. For all intents and purposes the entire world is convinced that Dr. Samura Kamara was cheated or robbed of his victory last year. So president Bio still insisting that he won is exactly as he had promised: that he will not hand power over to Dr. Samura of the APC. Another conclusion from this statement is that at the end of Maada Bio’s stay at the top he plans on handing power over to another SLPP member, and never to the APC. We see that the SLPP plans a long stay in the office of the president, just as Siaka Stevens had done. If you remember president Bio made a comment that for a long time people only voted for one party in Sierra Leone. This kind of attitude is not good for us the struggling people of this country while these people at the top keep playing games that continue to stifle our economic and development prospects,’ added another member of the group of Sierra Leoneans that spoke to nightwatch.
Meanwhile, a young man that said he belonged to the ruling party but voted against president Bio agreed to a prompting that there is video evidence that the current head of state had admitted, when he was a junta leader, that he manipulated events to give the winner of the 1996 elections, late President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, an advantage at the polls. The young man stated that with two highly questionable presidential elections victories (2018 and 2023) under his belt, the president is riding high and confident that he can make it a treble before he exits from the political scene by ensuring that another SLPP executive takes over from him as head of state.
‘All of these happenings don’t bode well for us as a people and country as such voting trends never represent the will of the people; they only benefit the president and his party but at the detriment of the people of Sierra Leone and our economic, peace, security and development prospects. I have to admit that we can’t trust both parties because they are playing games with us. We have the tripartite report but the president has not fulfilled the recommendations from the Bintumani Peace Conference. In the midst of our hardships these people are not focused or concerned about our problems. The people including me voted to kick president Bio out, but now we have been robbed. The international community cannot really help because all they can do are to impose funding cuts and sanctions which at the end of the day affect us and not those they intended,’ the ruling party supporter admitted.
On the side of the APC he went on that while Dr. Samura Kamara is trying with the help of the international community to get to the bottom of the June 2023 voting process, some factions in the APC are working with the SLPP government to hinder his progress. They are the ones, he continued, that are in support of president Bio’s 2028 agenda and calling for Dr. Samura and all to quit their advocacy to get to the bottom of Konneh’s presidential election result announcement.
‘All of this politics is confusing to us the electorate who voted for change. Both parties should be very careful with how they continue to play with the people’s mindset. If they continue to push us against the wall, we will have no choice but to react. Elections should not make us contend like this if they are conducted freely and under a fair and credible atmosphere,’ the young Freetonian concluded.