Presidential candidate of the main opposition, All People’s Congress (APC), has tagged President Maada Bio’s winning of June, 2023 election a massive rigging spree assisted by an “ethnic militant cabal,” the PAOPA.
To win an election through rigging is not the same as winning on a clean slate. Winning by rigging is Bio’s imbroglio as he is now required to implement dozens of tripartite recommendations, a bitter pill for him to swallow. He will incur the wrath of the international community, and if he implements in a way that cost the party’s power, his people in the South-East regions will not be comfortable with him.
Howwver, Samura Kamara still stand his grounds as he seems determined to retrieve his presidential victory.
Samura Kamara made the pronouncement of rigging is not winning when APC executive took a decision for him to quit the office of Presidential candidate and leader of the party after a lapse of six months.
The APC executive relies on the six-month clause of the party’s constitution.
The clause in question provides that any presidential candidate who loses an election should step down after six months and hands over the party leadership to the Chairman for the time being.
It was also on this constitutional clause that several APC politicians were bold to tag Samura Kamara a former flag-bearer of the APC party as his time had lapsed. Many Sierra Leoneans were stunned as they knew well that Samura Kamara did not lose the election to the Incumbent candidate, President Bio.
Had Samura Kamara listened to the call to step down, the party’s chairman would have easily taken over.
The Chairman, according to the constitution, runs the party’s affairs until another flag-bearer is elected in a national delegates’ conference, and this is the clause on which APC’s decision is based.
The decision came at the peak of the struggle to bring back the party’s victory which was allegedly hijacked by ECSL (Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone) in connivance with politicians of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). Most of the critics described SLPP’s action on the election day as daylight thievery with the assistance of men in arms.
Although the election, according to local and international reports, was a mere sham, the appeal for Samura Kamara to give way to a new leadership has not wavered.
The call for Samura Kamara to step down would have been watertight, if President Bio would have genuinely won the 2023 election, but it was a different story.
Reports by local and international election observation missions indicate that the 2023 election was marred with irregularities for which, the opposition, APC refused to take part in the activities of parliament for three months.
APC’s boycott left SLPP alone in parliament, an act that struck at the heart of democratic good governance.
Parliament is the first and supreme organ of government in terms of law making, representation and oversight. Performance of such functions call for a multi-party legislative house, and it is thus strange and unusual to see just one political party there.
The boycott also caused an isolation of Sierra Leone’s parliament by the sub-regional bloc, ECOWAS and the Commonwealth, prompting calls for a compromise between the ruling and the opposition parties.
Within days, the opposition candidate, Samura Kamara agreed with President Bio to take part in a peace deal brokered by the international community (ECOWAS, AU, Commonwealth and Development Partners).
The peace deal which took place in October, 2023 culminated into the Tripartite Committee whose role is to investigate the elections and proffer recommendations for electoral reforms and accountability.
President Bio was represented at the negotiation table by his Chief Minister, David Moinina Sengeh, and the agreement subsequently launched at State House by President Bio himself in the presence of ambassadors, high commissioners and development partners.
The Tripartite Committee completed its work last year and released 80 recommendations for electoral reforms, with a focus on ensuring that Sierra Leone’s future elections would be free, fair and credible.
Former US Ambassador to Sierra Leone, David Bryan Hunt declared, in a media interview, that five divergent recommendations remain outstanding amounting to 85.
If understood correctly, it is the remaining five recommendations that the people of Sierra Leone would know who actually won the 2023 election.
It is also in the outstanding five recommendations that those who play significant role in rigging the elections would be brought to justice as recommended by US’s tink-tank election observation body, Carter Centre.
The Electoral Justice Movement formed and led by the opposition candidate, Samura Kamara is in line with the accountability recommendation of the Carter Center report.
Currently, the Tripartite Committee’s recommendations have entered its implementation stage but speed bumps lie along the way.
Gauged by their actions, SLPP politicians who should create an enabling environment for the implementation of the recommendations appears to be in no mood to do so. They believe that the recommendations, especially the outstanding five, will hunt them if implemented.
The only way to keep their heads above waters is to set the tripartite recommendations aside and concentrate on other national issues with a priority on the constitutional amendment which is ongoing.
Recently, APC parliamentarians walked out of parliament owing to what they called a snail-pace implementation of the tripartite recommendations and the controversial appointment of Emond Alpha, Chief Electoral Commissioner. Edmond Alpha who APC accused of playing magic with figures in the 2023 election while he was one of the election commissioners is now in charge of the elections in 2028, a move that has scared APC politicians.
Despite the walkout, Edmond is still in charge, creating a cause for Sierra Leoneans to think deeply about what change has the APC’s one-month boycott created.
The answer is in the negative since SLPP has made it clear that they would not implement the recommendations and would also not bow to international pressure.
In a number of media interviews, SLPP Secretary-General, Umar Paran Trarawally distanced SLPP from the Agreement for National Unity saying government acted on its own.
“SLPP is not part of the Agreement for National Unity, and we will not accept any recommendations from the Tripartite Committee,” Paran Tarawally emphasised, while other senior SLPP politicians called it a “gentleman’s agreement.”
SLPP’s ex-Chairman, Alex Prince Harding said the decision for Sierra Leone’s next President is in the hands of President Bio adding that his party had never won an election by democratic means.
These diabolic plans trumpeted by SLPP’s senior politicians means that all is not well, and the international community must not bury their heads in the sand and pretend that all is well in Sierra Leone.
As Sierra Leone’s governance system begins to show cracks, it became a source of worry and head scratching for the international moral guarantors who expect government to sincerely implement the recommendations.
The guarantors have, on several occasions, visited Sierra Leone to assess the state of implementation of the tripartite recommendations.
On to this day, the implementation of the recommendations is still questionable as this press is yet to lay hands on any answer that indicate that the recommendations have been tabled in parliament for discussion, debate and voting.
Instead of implementing the recommendations, parliamentarians are very busy in the constitutional amendments which they hope would offer them political advantage in the 2028 election even when the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans will not participate in the election.
This is the point where President Bio’s imbroglio also rears its head as he wanders between either implementation of the tripartite recommendations or rewrite Sierra Leone’s Constitution.
If President Bio re-writes Sierra Leone’s Constitution without implementing the recommendations, he is still far away from 2028 elections, but all is a wait-and-see affairs as the drama unfolds.