Parliamentarians of the 5th Parliament have accused the current ordained Speaker of the 6th Parliament, Dr Chernor Abass Bundu, of being a speaker with flippant assertions and attacks against international powers.
According to them, the Speaker’s controversial statements have the propensity to implicate not only him but can also endanger our existence as Sierra Leoneans.
In one of his recent Parliamentary sittings before what they called recess, the ordained Speaker of 6th Parliament, Dr Chernor Abass Bundu lampooned the international community for what he described as working for regime change in Sierra Leone.
When addressing SLPP MPs in the Well of Parliament, Speaker Bundu challenged that the reason behind the international community’s involvement in the current political situation in the country is merely to protect and promote their own interests and not what interests Sierra Leoneans.
He revealed that the SLPP MPs should not too worry about the absence of the opposition APC MPs in the 6th Parliament, as they will come once they are ready to serve their people. The Speaker made this submission when addressing the SLPP MPs on Tuesday, 18 July 2023 in the Well.
Another heartrending and deceitful statement the Speaker made against outside powers is that, ‘If you think foreigners from outside Africa have a right to come again to our country to help you take control of our governance or anything else that is not your entitlement under our sovereign laws, then you are still living in the dark ages of colonialism which had long ago been banished’.
The Speaker made the disclosure on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 in the Chambers of Parliament.
Dr Bundu informed SLPP MPs that in the 1991 Constitution it is proclaimed that ‘This country shall never again return to the abomination of the one-party system’.
According to Bundu ‘Every citizen is enjoined to participate in and defend all democratic processes and practices and render assistance to appropriate and lawful agencies in the maintenance of law and order’.
He went further that, ‘that Constitution eschewed the one-party system of government that had governed the country since 1978 and reintroduced a multiparty democratic system as the only legal and acceptable polity that must prevail in this country and be held sacred by the entire citizenry’.
Dr Bundu also informed that if the APC failed to take their seats in Parliament the result could be devastating and detrimental to the country as a whole as well as to their democratic polity.
‘Under the APC watch and leadership, this country promulgated the extant Constitution in October 1991,’ he said.
He continued that, ‘If you withdraw yourself from participating in the process of decision-making then you should not be angry when others who agree to participate decide for you and your destiny’.
He said the first sitting was on 13 July when the seated MPs took their oaths of office as Members of Parliament.
Speaker Bundu went further that there were 54 seats to his left reserved exclusively for those members-elect of the All Peoples Congress (APC) party who are yet to present themselves to the House to take their seats.
He said like all of the SLPP and PC MPs, the APC MPs too had been declared duly elected by the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) and, apart from Hon Mohamed Bangura who has taken his seat, all the other 53 members were yet to do so.
‘I want to take this opportunity to specially acknowledge the presence in the Chamber of the Hon Mohamed Bangura who has been well advised and directed to come and take his seat to represent the people who had voted for him. I thank the Hon Mohamed Bangura for his wise decision, and I know this nation owes you a deep and abiding sense of gratitude for that singular patriotic action on your part,’ the Speaker said.
The Speaker furthered that there is a coterie of highly respected citizens of this country most of whom he know well and hold in high regard.
He revealed that they have been either contemporaries of his at school or college or laboured together in public life in this country.
He pointed out that they are too numerous to call them by name but a good number of them are household names and are well known both here at home and abroad.
He stated that they are people that have served this country with great distinction in governance in both the public and private sectors and of whom this country is richly proud of, ‘and they are all members of the APC Party’.
He therefore wants to appeal to all those eminent citizens to whom he had referred to step up to their sense of national duty and not allow their party ‘to be hijacked again by a small band of greedy, selfish and self-seeking politicians whose era is already well past and spent’.