The All Peoples Congress (APC) Party must accept truth with Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara breaking the ice. There is a popular saying that: “Truth is a moral weapon”. Moral truth therefore is when a moral statement accurately corresponds to reality. The moral obligation to tell the truth stems from commonsense, which morally recognizes a moral obligation to tell the truth.
As a Media House with a public interest, our justification for this is that, it is a basic moral principle, rule or value. Truth-telling makes possible freedom; and relaxes tension, and builds trust between people, and, in the life of faith, it makes possible ones closeness to God. People of good-will must always be willing to demand truth-telling because people when denied the truth and are misinformed, have the tendency of acting weirdly since they are being denied what empowers them and strengthens their resolve. To reap from the truth, it must be cultivated from the truth.
It is on these bases that we are encouraging Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara to be ‘godly; enough to tell the All Peoples Congress (APC) party and its grassroots supporters the truth and nothing but the truth about the re-run of the June 24, 2023 Presidential Election. Let him and his frenetic supporters stop fooling the people on an agenda that is an impossible mission and allow the party to engage in structural engineering to fit purpose for the next National Delegates Conference and indeed the 2028 elections.
To us, all indications point to this issue as the biggest anathema the party is grappling with and if this is not achieved; it would appear, has the tendency of splitting the party and hindering its chances of winning power and forming a government of the people. The writing is evidently clear on the wall to achieving this sinister agenda, but not in the absence of truth being told.
Be it as it may, the fact remains that the recommendations from the Tripartite Committee did not converge on a re-run of the Presidential Election. It was a position put forward by the APC party representatives and therefore it is a divergent matter; and its implementation by all means possible is stalled because the Tripartite Committee was an ad hoc setup and has no legal fiat to force its implementation. That is a fact and that is the truth.
The APC party did not go to court in the first instance because it lacked the necessary evidential materials to give the party the locus standi to make a case. Even during the Tripartite Committee engagements, the party couldn’t present 100% of its Result Reconciliation Forms (RRF) to still justify the case that Dr. Samura Kamara won the elections. These are all facts and the truth.
There are eighty (80) recommendations that both the APC and SLPP Tripartite Representatives were convergent on and implementation of these which are mostly directed at electoral reforms and ensuring electoral justice are set for implementation with the “bad guy” in this conundrum, the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) saying they are up and ready for the implementation of recommendations related to them, safe for the resignation of persons named. Those convergent issues are not being contested by Dr. Samura Kamara.
The divergent issue is the re-run of the Presidential Election. This divergent issue is what both parties did not agree on. This is a fact. This is the missing link between truth-telling and misinformation aimed at deviating attention from reality to myth.
We believe that it is because the truth is being hidden and misinformation being peddled in the ears and minds of vulnerable and susceptible grassroots supporters, that the much needed unity and forward-looking vision of the APC party is being eroded and replaced with vitriol, invectives and character assassination, using reckless elements as bloggers, who are equally vulnerable to the misinformation as the APC unsuspecting grassroots supporters.
To us, this is more the unrealistic cause for the beckoning of this nonsensical and abhorrent statement of “No Dr. Samura, no APC” largely attributed to the Dr. Samura camp bloggers and slanderers. This falls short of the show of gratitude to the APC for the opportunity accorded to Dr. Samura to run for two consecutive times as the party’s flagbearer; an opportunity he would never have had on his own merits if not from the APC and its wider membership. This is a factual truth.
One is bound to accept disagreements in a political party if it was the case with individual political perspectives, but to attack the characters and integrity of decent people within the party by people claiming to be APC members and supporters who are using faceless nomenclatures in the name blogging is, absolutely and definitely reprehensible and damning to the chances of building political cohesiveness necessary for a political party wanting to win political power.
For us and many Sierra Leoneans, Dr. Samura Kamara should come clear on the re-run matter and tell the truth as he knows it, and as he had been told to know. That was more the reason why he signed the Tripartite Committee’s final report. There is clear indication that Dr. Samura Kamara is making a veil push for his so-called electoral justice because of his failure to have used the channels to electoral justice for obvious reasons.
We are therefore calling on Dr. Samura Kamara to be the leader he is, to stop deceiving the people with his veiled push for electoral justice that can never be achieved, to let the APC be- to allow the party to move on with the businesses of reforms in readiness for the 2028 general elections.
We are also appealing to those in support of Dr. Samura Kamara who are seeing him as the Avatar of veiled hopes to calm down the waters and to see reason for the impossibility of a re-run of the June 24, 2023 Presidential Election. Let them transform the energies they have exhibited for the past one year propagating this veiled re-run theory exacerbated by toxicity, acrid animosity, and divisiveness to one that reasons with the truth so as to give the APC party to carry on with its constitutional right to exist and operate for the good of the people of Sierra Leone. The party’s membership verification and registration drive that kicked off on July 31, 2024 must be and should be supported without any form of hindrance.
We believe this is very crucial for the way forward for the APC party. It is an exercise that every APC party member or intended member should comply with as a way of consolidating the party’s support base.
In our view, for people like Alhaji Kemoh Sesay to come out to refuse to participate in this exercise and to condemn it is quite unfortunate. To us, it manifests the level at which the misconception of the Tripartite Committee recommendations has gone; such a move, in our view, will only slow progress of the party and continue to hold it at bay for want of an elusive electoral justice. A review of the party’s register is crucially important. Verifying the register and bringing in many more is a constitutional requirement that should garner the support of all true APCians. This process must go on and must be logically concluded. It would therefore be soothing for all executive members of the APC party at Ward, District and Regional levels to come together and help bring sense to their members with truth and help revitalize this membership and grassroots network.
It is only when the APC party stands together would they work to “re-engage their base and renew their commitment for a stronger party vision, values and goals, which can solidify the APC as a powerful force to take over constitutional power in the next elections.
We are therefore calling for unity across the board; we urge for constructive engagements in order to build a stronger APC party that is ready to take up governance.
Our strong belief is that the APC party should embrace truth about the infeasibility of a re-run and Dr. Samura Kamara must take the lead in breaking that ice.