By Felix Khonte
My take on political developments in our country these past five / six years has never happened in any part of the world to my living memory. This great country is gradually losing its credentials in the new order of modern democratic set-ups worldwide. And if urgent measures are not taken by our moral guarantors to try and arbitrate on the issues emanating from the disputed June 24th, 2023, elections justly and fairly, this country could be termed as a failed state! Deep inside my heart of hearts, I would not like to see that happen. But by the actions of a few selfish and greedy politicians, each claiming supremacy over the other, with ulterior motives deeply entrenched in their political agendas, are slowly dragging this country back to the path of civil unrest.
The two main contenders in the elections, the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party SLPP and the main opposition All Peoples Congress APC, have been at each other’s throat because of unfinished and unresolved issues emanating from those contentious elections. The pronouncement by Mohamed Konneh, the chief electoral commissioner and returning officer of the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone, that the incumbent president Bio is the winner of the elections did not go down well with the opposition. The international observation teams the EU, Carter Centre, AU, ECOWAS and a host of others, including our local observers, the National Elections Watch, NEW, all discredited the results as they did not reflect the will of the people.
As a way of seeking redress and justice, the main challenger in the ‘skewed’ elections called on their Parliamentarians, Mayors, Councillors and Chair Persons country wide not to take part in the governance of the state. The impasse lasted for three months before our moral guarantors (the Commonwealth, AU and ECOWAS) could intervene. A cross party committee was organised to find a way of resolving the deadlock. The chief minister David Sengeh represented the government, and Dr. Samura Kamara, the flag bearer of the opposition represented the All Peoples Congress. The committee was housed at the Bintumani Conference Centre and lasted for three days. At the end of the deliberations, a communiqué was signed that culminated to the setting up of the Tripartite Committee or Elections Investigations Body.
The committee started its deliberations on a slow pace as the government had not wanted it to deliberate on the contentious elections results. Until when the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, who had made a stopover visit to the country made an initial contribution of $1.5 million to the committee before it could start its deliberations. The committee was composed of seven members each from the two political parties and the arbitrators. The investigators completed their work with bottlenecks on the part of Mr. Mohamed Konneh, blatantly refusing to tender the results that he declared president Bio the winner of the presidential elections on the first round. That notwithstanding, the committee rounded up their findings. The first batches of eighty recommendations have been presented to president Bio at State House in the presence of Dr. Samura Kamara. The first batch consists mostly of electoral reforms. There are still five very critical issues that deal with results verifications and justice in the electoral systems. This very important document has been tabled at the United Nations Security Council. The Australian Judge, Kate Sullivan will deliver it to president Bio in the coming days. How the president could react to it, is a closely guarded secret.
The rumours making the rounds in the corridors of the opposition of a big time sell out to the ruling party is not good for our fledgling democracy. But as I made a statement in one of my articles earlier this year, “that the complexity of any situation is compounded by the very elements within its structures, put in charge to run the affairs of that institution”. This is exactly what has happened with the main opposition APC. Most of the senior executive members have been accused of taking bribes from the corridors of power to pave the way for president Bio to continue in office. They are engulfed in day dreaming for agenda 2028, by which time Dr. Samura Kamara will not be qualified to run for flagbearer position again. These deeds and actions by some highly placed executive members of the party are slowly taking the party to its grave. Now that they should have stood behind their leader who had always maintained that ‘the elections are not yet over until they are over’. More surprising though, is the complete silence of the running mate, who in the event of a success in the fight against electoral injustice, will be the second gentle man in the country. WOW!!
The founding fathers of this great party cannot be at peace in their graves as they watch from their tombs the terrible things that have befallen the party they nurtured and cherished dearly. By their actions and deeds, they are in coalition with president Bio’s agenda of returning the country to a one party state. One cannot underestimate the statements coming from their chairman, Dr. Prince Harding who made it categorically clear that they will never hand over power to the APC. And there clandestine constitutional amendments that are going on that will tend to make the presidential term to seven years. This has been their grand plan that gave birth to the proportional representation or district bloc electoral system. All the conspirators in this grand scheme of disloyalty and dishonesty have not only betrayed the party and their supporters, but the vast majority of the populace who voted for change.
The seeming silence of most of the senior executive members of the party seems to be lending credence to these allegations levied against them. Only a few of them were bold enough to clear their consciences amidst all the gullible stories of accepting bribes from their ‘strange bedfellows’. But it has happened “just like a vapour”, when the final results and verifications documents are about to be presented to president Bio in a few days’ time, when in a dramatic twist of events, the deputy publicity secretary of the party has let the cat out of the bag that there will be no ‘rerun’ of the elections. BOMBSHELL!!!