The people of Sierra Leone and indeed serious democracies around the world not limited to our international moral guarantors especially those that aid and support our ailing government of Sierra Leone that should have long been weaned from their financial purse strings cannot and should not allow for the government of Sierra Leone under president Julius Maada Bio and the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) to continue on its illegal mandate.
This is the contention of grassroots supporters and members of the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) who say the party’s flagbearer, Dr Samura Kamara will win the battle to ensure a rerun of the June 2023 presidential disgrace of an election, get electoral justice for the party, country and those that lost their lives, freedom and properties before, during and after the electoral processes, and accomplish the task of seeing those who participated in the manipulation of the vote tallying from all political parties not limited to the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party, the APC, and the elections management bodies facing the court of law and serving time in prison for their crimes against the people, state and democratic good governance (the rule of law).
“The 2023 presidential election is not done and dusted hence it is not over. It is still inconclusive. For as long as we don’t have access to the disaggregated voting data from polling stations across the country, the elections have not been concluded. We the grassroots supporters and members of the mighty APC stand by and with our flagbearer Dr Samura Kamara demanding that we see the proper practice of democracy in Sierra Leone which demands that our votes are accounted for. It should be unheard of for a party to claim to have won an election for which the electoral commission has not released the voting record for all of us, even those from the SLPP and the other political parties, to know if and how our votes were counted. The United States, United Kingdom, Germany, the entire European Union, Ireland, members of ECOWAS and the Commonwealth, and France will never allow for such a state of affair to happen in their countries. Look at what happened in 2020 in the US; it almost led to civil war in the US when for the first time since their civil war their own people attacked the US Capitol because of a presidential election result. The international community cannot and should not stand aside and allow for Sierra Leone to set the record of being the first country where a regime continues in governance without a political mandate based on the people’s votes,” said a member of the APC grassroots associated with the party’s youth congress.
The aggrieved grassroots supporters of the main opposition said despite their party executives’ obvious sabotaging of Dr Samura Kamara’s cause aimed at ensuring that Sierra Leone’s practice of democracy matures “by their siding with the ruling party government in an effort to avoid court cases being brought up against them by the president Bio regime” the fight for a rerun of the discredited and unresolved 2023 presidential election is still achievable, adding that the people of Sierra Leone will see history made when at the end of their crusade president Bio will be expected to either give in to their demands for a rerun or vacate the Office of the President.
“There is nowhere in the world where a president continues in power after winning an election without the elections commission producing the voting results for the people and the world to view. What the APC executives, the SLPP and the international community are attempting to sweep under the carpet is a travesty of the democratic principle of governance, constitutionality and the rule of law. The National Elections Watch, the Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion, the United Nations, ECOWAS and the US, UK, Germany, the entire EU, Ireland, the Commonwealth, and France have to guaranty us closure on this issue by international arbitration. They have to release their report and recommendations on what really happened last year when the votes were counted by the chief returning officer of the electoral commission before and after he announced the incumbent president as winner.
Where in the modern world will you have a situation in national politics where there are no elections data from general and presidential elections yet you have people declared as winners? This is why we are demanding a rerun of the process, as the rerun also secures that those who took part in the manipulation of the vote tallying are identified and brought to book in the court of law for prosecution by the state, even if they are APC members. With the rerun we kill two birds with one stone, and if president Bio is confident that he can defeat Dr Samura in an open, free, fair and credible electoral battle then the rerun should not be a problem for him and his party. No matter how long this takes, no matter the compromise the APC executives and some of our international moral guarantors might have made with the SLPP and president Bio we will get electoral justice,” stated another grassroots supporter of Dr Samura Kamara that spoke to Nightwatch.
The young APC activists said that Dr Samura Kamara’s cause has to work to change the image that the Bio and SLPP led government is giving to the rest of the world about the effective nature of the rule of law hence justice, the House of Parliament and the Judiciary in Sierra Leone, adding “president Bio is causing an embarrassment for the country whenever he leaves the country on one of his many overseas travels because he is not respected by other leaders who were popularly elected by their citizens.”
Another grassroots APC supporter of Dr Samura Kamara has this to say: “The Maada Bio regime is passing off as a real government although everyone knows that he didn’t win the election. We have it from a very reliable source that he was not wanted at the inauguration ceremony for the young Senegalese president and that the former Liberian president does not hold him in high regard. This is true of many other countries where he appeared, either announced or otherwise.
The head of the military junta in Guinea didn’t come here to visit the president, he came to warn him. So this regime is an embarrassment and a threat to our fragile peace, security and national cohesion. It is the reason for all the lack of peace, security and national cohesion that has made it necessary for ECOMOG/ECOMSIL to be needed in this country. Why all these threats to our national peace and security? The reason is because president Bio and the SLPP want to be in power at any cost, even at the cost of our continued peace and security.
Imagine that the government removing Dr. Samura’s state security details, why? Does this show a commitment to peace and national security? However, our APC executives are not as committed to Dr Samura’s disciplined and principled stance. These people that we placed our hopes in to ensure that our votes are protected have turned their backs on the flagbearer who wants to ensure that justice gets the upper hand in our electoral process hence vindication for the rule of law. We have also been waiting on the international community for a year and four months now. When will they act like moral guarantors and see that the illegal regime acquiesces to the demands of the citizenry and the sound application of the rule of law to ensure that we see the voting data? Why are president Bio, the SLPP and the head of the electoral commission Mohamed Konneh so reluctant to release their voting data? We will tell you, it is because they know that if they do it will show that president Bio lost to Dr Samura Kamara and that they will all be facing the court for prosecution. This is why we are staying on this course, irrespective of who in the APC is a sell out and does not support Dr Samura Kamara. The international community has the opportunity here to see that Sierra Leone becomes a proper democracy where the rule of law, respect for human rights, transparency and accountability are ensured in our society.”
The APC grassroots supporters say the illegal Bio regime will not continue until 2028 and are calling on the international community to make their recommendations known from the Tripartite Committee process, as they are aware like the rest of the APC grassroots that the Mohamed Konneh produced and announced presidential elections result was faulty and not credible. Lonta!