By: Winstanley. R. Bankole. Johnson
To appreciate the palpable disappointment of the APC Party rank and file on their delegates to the Tripartite Committee, one would need to assess the thought processes that informed their individual choices by the “Select Committee” and also the failure by that “Select Committee” to have done due diligence by considering the extent to which their personal political ambitions would stand in the way of the Party’s commitments to the attainment of Electoral Justice under our present circumstances. All of the APC delegates to the Tripartite Committee were inarguably good seeds, but at which precise point of their deliberations seeds of insidious treachery began to manifest amongst them cannot be ascertained. That was a serious oversight that is now figuratively costing us our arms and legs sort out. The facts are now very clear that our intra-APC party mistrusts have reached fever pitch, as could be noted from some unpropitious and injurious statements by the Party’s Leader in Parliament Hon. Abdul Kargbo (who also was a member of the Technical Committee appended to the Tripartite Committee), against our 2023 Flag bearer aspirant Dr. Samura Kamara.
Burnt Offering
Those statements are neither in the interest of the APC Party in particular, nor of the country in general, especially under our current volatile political climate. As a matter of fact to many of us they were both utterly shameful and disgraceful, coming as policy statements from a political party establishment that prides itself on its longevity. To add salt to injury, the very cohorts passing off as the current National Executive Officers of the Party that would appear to have been incessantly fanning flames of discord recently ebbed to their lowest, when they instructed the Secretary Genera Mr. Lansana Dumbuya to also publicly demand (and in writing too), for a return of the Key to the Office of the Leader at the Party’s Headquarters from Dr. Samura Kamara. That is the office into which he cannot be barred from accessing until either the issues surrounding our still unresolved June 2023 elections results are logically settled or another Flag bearer becomes duly elected in the fullness of time.
But again there lies the fundamental difference between the manner the opposition Party in Venezuela are treating their own Flag bearer Edmundo Gonzales and the utterly disrespectful manner the APC Party in Sierra Leone has been treating their own “Standard Bearer” Dr. Samura Kamara. Whereas in Venezuela the Opposition Party backed their flag bearer to the hilt and even helped him to flee to Spain incognito, in Sierra Leone it is the Opposition Party that is offering their own flag bearer as a burnt offering, by openly frustrating his every move to restore democracy through Electoral Justice.
If the APC Executives are not heckling Dr. Samura Kamara to quote: “To step down as flag bearer so as not to hold the Party to ransom” – Unquote, they would be blaming him for raising dust at the party office precincts during a recent heavy downpour of rain. And such hecklings have become so intense and passionate, that the SLPP are not even bothering to defend their claim to power, because it is the APC that is doing all that for them through infightings. Come to think of it, the APC is the only Opposition party that I know of on Planet Earth that even when on the brink of attaining political power, cared less about commitments to their signatures on a binding International Agreement, but would rather abort the process allegedly for short-term pecuniary gains.
Mandate
But beyond a concerted effort at embarrassing Dr. Samura Kamara for something as trivial as the return of office Keys, that demand smirks of a dearth of corporate governance capacity within the APC hierarchy, having regard to the fact that the public was neither aware when the keys were taken into Dr. Samura Kamara’s custody, nor was there any furore over it at that time to elicit public interests.
Meantime observe the choice of Hon. Abdul Kargbo to perform the “hatchet man’s” role. As the APC Party’s Leader in Parliament he could tantalize the gullible gallery of proletariats at his will and pleasure with specious utterances. He is therefore best suited for articulating the begrudging views and opinions of the entire APC National Executive that are working against Dr. Samura Kamara’s pursuits of truth and justice, and all of whom whether by financial inducements or pallid stupidity have agreed to sacrifice our June 2023 electoral victory at the altar of corruption, just so that the current administration can complete a second term illegally and on a still unresolved political mandate.
Assertions
But let’s revert to the thrust of Hon. Abdul Kargbo’s assertions that our International Moral Guarantors (IMG) for the Agreement for National Unity (ANU) had from the “get-go” informed them in clear and unambiguous terms that (a). They were neither here to examine the June 2023 results, nor to discuss anything pertaining to a re-run of the elections because as far as they were concerned, those elections were done and dusted with (b). They as IMG do not have, and will not be providing the required funding to conduct fresh elections (c). The APC Party should therefore direct their focus to the Y-2028 elections. And that (d). It was only Dr. Samura Kamara that has been deceiving supporters.
Now if the intention of Hon. Abdul Kargbo and the APC Party was to embarrass Dr. Samura Kamara then they failed woefully as rather, it opened them all up to more questions than they ever had imagined and which not even the Secretary General can field as under:
Why did it take the Party over a year to inform us their supporters what they claimed the IMG had told them immediately upon their arrival on 16th October 2023?
And for a Party so prone to writing letters to the Security Sector to rein its supporters into order, or to be humiliating its own Flag bearer, wouldn’t a Public Notice on their Party Note Headed Paper (and copying same to the SLPP and the United Nations and ECOWAS (UNECOWAS) on the issue that the elections were truly done and dusted have sufficed?
Why would the IMG need to have pre-empted the outcomes of the “Bintumani Accords” by stating openly that funding for fresh elections has been set aside?
In the heat of the Tripartite Committee workings, serious confrontational exchanges occoured between Dr. Marrah and Dr. Richard Conteh on the one hand and Dr. Samura Kamara (alone) on the other hand on the preference of whether to insert the request for either a “Re-Run” or “Re-Count” of the ballot papers. In the event, the former for a “Re-Run” won the day. Of what use and benefit was that alternative to Dr. Kelfallah Marrah and Dr. Richard Conteh and/or the Party, when the APC Executives knew full well that the position of the IMG about neither an Elections “Re-Run” nor for a “Re-Count” was sacrosanct and could never be compromised? Who then between and among Dr. Kelfallah Marrah, Dr. Richard Conteh, Dr. Samura Kamara and the APC Executives/Technical Committee members was fooling or deceiving the supporters?
Strategy
If prudence had directed the APC Team to the “Bintumani Accords” of between 16th and 18th October 2023 properly, they (including Hon. Abdul Kargbo and I suppose the entire APC Party Executives) could have discerned that it would have been most disingenuous for the IMG to have told them point blank – and in the presence of the SLPP – that they were here to remove Dr. Julius Maada Bi/SLPP from power and were even prepared to finance fresh elections. To have done so would have immediately scuppered the entire peace dialogue processes and triggered an immediate SLPP boycott from the processes.
It was the same strategy employed by the US Ambassador to keep the SLPP onboard throughout the Agreement for National Unity (ANU) talks. He first satisfied SLPP ego by all along drumming into their ears that the Tripartite Committee had only eighty (80) recommendations, until the last minute when the same Ambassador finally announced that the Tripartite Committee Recommendations actually contained eighty-four (84) recommendations in total, the additional four (4) recommendations including all those other critical issues the SLPP had always reneged against discussing but were subsequently embedded therein, and hinging on:
Resolutions No. 3 – to wit: (a). Disaggregated Elections Results Examinations, (b). Electoral Reforms (c). Electoral Justice/Accountability by those responsible for undermining democracy and (d). Elections Re-Run/or Replacement/fresh Elections. Otherwise to what purposes were the results demanded from Electoral Commission Sierra Leone for examinations?
Resolution No.4 – Greater Accountability for (a). Detained and / or missing persons (we still have over 300 disappeared souls to be accounted for) (b). Discontinuance of all politically motivated cases whether on account of Political Demonstrations, Campaign Rallies (c). As per various indictments machinated through the three Commissions of Inquiries (COIs) set up by the SLPP immediately upon their assuming office in 2018. It cannot be denied that our appearances before those COIs were not politically motivated.
Signatories
Ordinarily what I am engaged in now is exactly what duty bearers in the Party’s Executive ought to have prioritized. Otherwise this debacle within the APC Party speaks volumes about the extent to which this same Executive will be prepared to go in the event situations repeat themselves at future electoral cycles. This struggle therefore has far more to do with upholding and defending democratic tenets than with safeguarding the political ambitions of Dr. Samura Kamara. How sure are those now touting their personal political agenda that what they are pretending not to see against Dr. Samura Kamara or even worse more, will not be meted out to them at future elections cycles?
If the APC Executives were as seriously committed as Dr. Samura Kamara in defending their supporters’ votes, the point they should be hammering home now is the statement by the American Ambassador that insofar as our June 24th 2023 Multi-tiered Elections are concerned Quote: “THERE ARE NO RESULTS” – Unquote. And that is very important especially as the Party’s hierarchy to wit: its Chairpersons and Secretary General are committed as signatories to both the “Bintumani Accords” and its offshoot of the “Tripartite Committee”. Accordingly as “signatories” therefore they are duty bound to pursue achievement of all recommendations from the Tripartite Committee that are “implementable and actionable”.
They are also to steadfastly pursue our IMG to clarify on which mandate the present administration governs. They owe us a duty of guidance on how to regularize this political impasse by advising our next steps. For me, it is at this point that the long awaited “Tripod” Report version of the International Community to complete the “Tripartite Committee’s Report” must be challenged. We need to see their own “Recommendations” because after all it is supposed to be a public document. And unless that happens I will continue to hold it against the IMG (the Independent Committee for Peace and National Cohesion (ICPNC), ECOWAS and the UN, the Commonwealth, the governments of United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Ireland, the Carter Center etc..) that they too are also complicit in undermining democracy in Sierra Leone.
