By: Joseph Elongima Samai (NJ)
Their first onslaught was against the British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone Lisa Chesney (MBE). For her rather innocuous statement on our polity the SLPP used an APC political prostitute to railroad her into silence by accusing her of breaching the Geneva Conventions. To avoid her losing focus of the bigger political picture – which is the back of Julius Maada Bio at all cost – she tactfully retreated to her diplomatic trenches, and has been covertly operating from those burrows since. By her training and discipline that was about the best option to have exercised. There was no way someone who is said to have headed a position as sensitive as the dreaded UK MI5 would have allowed a political upstart to obviate her focus.
Thereafter the SLPP handlers totally misconstrued their veiled attacks against Lisa Chesney for success and concentrated on knit picking the utterances of members of the International Community that had condemned our last June elections that gave victory to Bio and the SLPP as shambolic and lacking in merit that has warranted forensic investigations by International Experts.
When US Ambassador David Hunt proffered his honest opinions on the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the Tripartite Committee with specific regards to a re-run or fresh elections, the SLPP propaganda dogs gleefully lapsed into a frenzy. They flooded the media by vigorously attempting to drum into our APC heads that the Ambassador was spot on, and that our next multi-tier elections should be in 2028. Not for once did anyone in the SLPP accuse David Hunt of breaching the Geneva Convention like they did to Lisa Chesney, because David Hunt’s statements resonated with their take that Bio’s second term presidency is now iron cast.
Now this same David Hunt has thrown another clanger – among other things – that he is certain of two “sure balls” to drop from “the basket” of recommendations expected from the Tripartite Committee. Those two “sure balls” he said will amply dwell on (A). Electoral Reforms and (B). Accountability – the former to possibly henceforth make our electoral statutes inviolable-proof (hopefully), and latter to set examples once and for all on all those who were responsible for undermining the processes leading to, and even the conduct of the June 24th 2023 elections, and by extension, democracy. By both expected recommendations inter alia, Sierra Leoneans are to believe that finally- finally, sanity will be restored to within our polity as by practical examples set on each and every culprit, never again will others contemplate – nay repeat – their nefarious deeds to prize personal and ethnocentric political interests over and above the National Constitution .
In my heart of hearts, I still maintain we do not need new electoral laws and guidelines. What we rather need is strict adherence to existing laws and the application of penalties for their breaches to the full to send the correct signals. Nevertheless I shall focus on the second aspect in the “basket” of Ambassador Hunt which is “Accountability” – the act of bringing to book all those involved in, with or found culpable – whether by acts of commission or omission – of either violating our extant electoral laws and or of undermining same that culminated in the obstruction of democracy in manners that caused the Electoral Commission Sierra Leone and Mohammed Konneh to announce and confer a second term presidency on Julius Maada Bio, based on the rigged results that the ECSL/Mohammed Konneh have not had the fortitude of conviction to publish/broadcast almost a year to his 27th June 2023 announcements.
The beauty of this “Accountability” aspect- which in fact is my delight – lies in the fact that its implementation will cut across our political spectrum to include in the process activists from the APC, the SLPP and even other smaller political parties, as will finally put to rest the fallacy that our curse as a nation lay in the nomenclature of our two main political parties – APC and SLPP. Come to think of it, if the Labour and Conservative Parties of the UK and the Democrats and Republicans in the United States could have existed for far longer than both our APC and SLPP without causing much damage to their respective countries, then logically our curse lay not in the nomenclature and colours of the APC and SLPP, but perhaps in the spirit and character of those comprising the greater majority of the membership that have invariably formed the “Executive” of both the APC and SLPP, and who even when they would have assumed political power democratically, find it very hard to break away from our innate cultural and tribal “Chieftaincy” mentality and practices of clinging on to power eternally even if the heavens fall.
The number of those to be held “accountable” across the political spectrum will not be restricted to those who directly or indirectly used Security Sector to inflict terror, destruction and deaths throughout the APC North-Western stronghold to prevent them from campaigning on their ECSL and Political Parties’ Regulatory Commission (PPRC) designated campaign days, but will also draw into their dragnet those who also manipulated the Constitution and other extant laws or even influenced the passing of laws less than six months to the June elections with the covert intention of conferring political advantage to the Bio regime. Into that category will fall names like the former Rt. Hon. Speaker Dr. Abass Bundu, the former Head of the PPRC Massiyanday Bangua and Mohammed Konneh as Head of ECSL. Others to be held “accountable” will additionally include past and present Heads of the various Security Sectors – Office of National Security, the Military and the Police as well as Individual politicians in both the SLPP and APC deemed to have played pivotal roles in overtly or covertly undermining democracy. In monitoring progress our International partners should leave no stone unturned if this Augean Political Stable called Sierra Leone is to be “sanitized” at last.
And this ”accountability” process for Bio and Co to face the music is bound to be a reality because there is no way the UN systems would grant another “amnesty” to the same villains inside two generations. This was the same man under whose watch as the second-in command during the NPRC Days slaughtered twenty-nine (29) citizens in cold blood on 29th December 1992 and had their corpses disposed of in mass unmarked graves. The UN systems “pardoned” Bio and Co when they exited power in 1996 in the hope that if given a second chance at governance he would be reformed and improve. But alas!! He squandered it all on the altar of blind vindictiveness and tribalism.
So what the world has witnessed under a second watch of Julius Maada Bio since April 2018 to date are harassments, intimidations, indiscriminate arrests, detention, maiming, killing and displacement of hordes of opposition sympathizers – all extra-judicially. As a matter of fact Bio so killed to his heart’s content until he declared a voluntary moratorium when he said: “We nor dae kill again……we have opened up the democratic space) (Meaning “We will not kill more opposition people again…..We have now opened up the democratic space”).
In hindsight Julius Maada Bio is the same person who since 1992 has caused so much distress to this country that his diehard supporters coined the “nom de guerre” for him as “The Tormentor”, whose incumbency has always left behind trails of devastation and terror over the lives and properties of his perceived opponents.
No doubt this process of holistic “sanitization” contemplated in our polity will require tough enforcement methodologies, hence the steps taken so far by the ECOWAS, AU, Commonwealth and finally on the UN Security Council whose mandate to deploy over 15,000 (fifteen thousand) troops – twice that number of our military personnel on roll – are on standby to intervene, restore and defend democracy should anyone with “bullets” wish to defend Julius Maada Bio’s continued illegal retention of political power. They will be robustly contained and then shall come to pass that which had long been written that indeed, God Almighty is in control of this country.
On the basis of abundant factual evidences gathered so far through a forensic examination and investigation of results by International Experts supporting the Tripartite Committee with regards to:
- Massive over-voting proven in the entire South-East (and all of which will be disqualified)
- Massive irregularities bordering on falsification and manipulation of results during counting, tabulation, collation and transmission of ballots (all of which will be regularized
nothing now remains but for the International Community spearheaded by the UN Security Council to pronounce the true and accurate results reflecting the “WILL” of the majority of Sierra Leoneans with Dr. Samura Matthew Wilson Kamara pronounced as the duly elected President of the June 24th 2023 Presidential Elections.
That is precisely the basis why the American Ambassador has been right all along to insinuate that there will be no re-run or fresh elections once points 1 and 2 supra have been proved beyond all reasonable doubts.
Meantime let us ignore the tantrums of those goading the APC to produce their own Results Reconciliation Forms (RRFs) or that the All Political Parties’ Association (APPA) will be seeking a Supreme Court Injunction against the Tripartite Committee. There is no law compelling any political party to collate and retain RRFs as proofs of their victory (especially when the body constitutionally charged with conducting elections haven’t provided theirs) , nor is the APPA a political party representing anyone except their affiliate members. Finally there is also no logical way any Ambassador or International Observer Group would turn around to tell us now that the untenable status-quo should continue and that Julius Maada Wonie Bio should continue riding into the sunset for another four (4) ungodly (possibly bloody) years in office as President of this Republic of Sierra Leone ON A STOLEN ELECTORAL MANDATE.