The handing over of the much anticipated report and recommendations by the Tripartite Committee did not go according to the expectations of the majority of the people who had been led to believe that at the end of the process the substantive issue of president Julius Maada Bio wielding a stolen or illegitimate presidential mandate was going to be addressed or resolved.
The end of the Tripartite Committee process was a big loss for the people and the nation of Sierra Leone. It has resulted to the people and government of Sierra Leone, Dr Samura Kamara and the All People’s Congress (APC) being the biggest losers.
However, the end of the process was a win-win situation for president Bio and his Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) led government as it appears that he will continue on and get to finish his hard won second term presidential mandate despite the widespread belief and assumption that he didn’t really win the people’s mandate to rule.
The biggest losers of the tripartite process remain the people and the government of Sierra Leone. Although the people had been misled and made to believe that at the end of the process, Dr Samura Kamara would be declared the winner of the 24 June 2023 presidential election and the incumbent Julius Maada Bio made or forced to vacate office for Dr Samura Kamara, this didn’t happen and the people have had their hope of electing a president of their choice to solve their six years of economic and social hardships and sufferings dashed to pieces.
After a final analysis, the tripartite process was actually a disgraceful episode for Sierra Leone especially for the government and the elections management bodies. The majority of the recommendations are reminders of how elections management bodies are to perform their duties. It became obvious during the review process by the Tripartite Committee that the heads and others working at institutions such as the electoral commission, the Sierra Leone Police, Statistics Sierra Leone and others had not been doing their jobs by the letter and spirit of the law.
Therefore the recommendations that mostly addressed how these people are to perform their duties are verdicts against the elections management bodies for not doing their jobs to the letter, which always result to electoral injustice and the disputes that ensue.
While the recommendations touched on their performances, they shied away from the main issue of the president operating on a stolen presidential mandate. The resulting political impasse that resulted from the chief electoral commissioner announcing the incumbent as the winner led to widespread insecurity due to the fear that the end of the tripartite process (June 19) was going to be a day of bloodletting and destruction of public and private properties as it happened on August 10, 2022.
Meanwhile, another set of big losers that resulted from the Tripartite Committee review process of our electoral system and processes are those that were disenfranchised, those that were murdered and injured or jailed, those whose properties were destroyed and set on fire, those who were forced to flee for their lives and safety from their towns, cities and villages and those whose votes were not counted during the tallying by the chief returning officer.
The second biggest loser of the whole process is the person of Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara. Although he had suffered and accepted another questionable win by Julius Maada Bio in 2018, after now losing to Bio for a second time, Samura Kamara has now lost his validity as a flagbearer of the APC and even any hope of further seeking the flag as the party’s future flagbearer. Per the APC constitution Dr Samura Kamara is done seeking the APC flag hence the office of the president. He is now an ex officio member of the party, unless he manages to pull off a PAOPA move as Maada Bio did in the SLPP. For all intents and purposes, Dr Samura Kamara has final reached the Waterloo of his presidential ambition.
The third big loser of the Tripartite Committee process is the All Peoples Congress. The APC and their supporters will have to wait until 2028 to contest again for the office of the president. The party has been in disarray ever since Dr Samura Kamara was selected by former President Ernest Bai Koroma. The doctor’s tenure at the top of the party’s hierarchy was not a smooth one as members regularly battled each other much to the dismay of the public. Throughout the whole electioneering process, the APC boycott of government, the dialogue, the communiqué and tripartite process, the party has been in tatters. The end of the tripartite review has not brought any reprieve to the party as its flagbearer will not be able to see Julius Maada Bio hand over power to him as they had hoped and been led to believe.
Staunch members of the APC still believe that they were the legitimate winners of the 24 June 2023 presidential elections and feel robbed by the Tripartite Committee whose mandate they had mistakenly believed was to resolve the presidential election result impasse.
The APC now faces and has to embrace for the possibility of president Bio’s and Prince Harding’s pronouncements that the SLPP will not hand over power to the APC, translated to mean that Bio intends on handing power over to another SLPP partisan.
With two highly questionable, doubtful and debatable presidential elections victories under his belt, president Bio is confident that he can make it a treble with his final act as president of handing power over to another SLPP president in 2028.
At the end of the day, the end of the Tripartite Committee process was a big loss for the people and nation of Sierra Leone.
