To the uninitiated, the SLPP and president Julius Maada Bio have Dr Samura Kamara exactly where they want him. They have him at the point where he is behaving just as expected. While Dr Samura Kamara on the outside seems as if he is working in the interest of the APC and citizens, he has however been dancing to the tunes of the ruling party all along unbeknownst to him.
Kamara has been pushing his agenda instead of the opposition party’s agenda when it comes to resolving the presidential results impasse. It is believed that Dr Samura Kamara has been in secret negotiations with the SLPP regime because he is not sure the rerun would happen.
This certainly questions his loyalty to the APC, which Adebayor and other well-meaning partisans have been asking.
That Dr Samura Kamara is an SLPP automaton is clear to those who will see reason to consider many of his actions or inactions that would be exactly what Paopa strategists pegged him at. The SLPP and Maada Bio do not expect for Dr Samura Kamara to address critical issues of great concern to the people who voted for him.
Even after the disputed 24th June, 2023 elections results announcement, Dr Samura Kamara is very quiet when it comes to addressing or speaking directly on any issue of national importance without regurgitating recycled points that still don’t address the issue.
For example, the announcement of Mohamed Konneh as president Bio’s choice for an electoral commissioner was greeted with widespread objection. Many people in the ruling SLPP government and the opposition had a problem with Konneh, especially his suitability for the position. Many questioned his competence, loyalty and membership in the ruling party, SLPP. Many people know Konneh as an active SLPP member that is reportedly more Paopa than president Bio.
But, Dr Samura Kamara and the APC were so embroiled in intraparty and personal tussles that had to do with the courts (Dr Samura Kamara and his corruption trials, the APC including the NRM and Alfred Peter Conteh debacle among others) that Konneh was interviewed and approved by a Parliament with almost even strength in terms of number of representatives. When they should have the APC failed to address this issue until after it became apparent that Konneh would be doing his boss’s bidding.
Although Samura Kamara and the party’s very late objections to Konneh’s appointment were noted, they didn’t produce the desired result because Konneh is still electoral commissioner, even after his disastrous performance regarding the 24th June, 2023 elections that is ruining our economy and driving a wedge between the people along tribal, regional and political lines. The lack of peace and social instability is so obvious in Sierra Leone that every day we still see heavily armed men patrolling our streets day and night. Yet, this is not something important for Dr Samura Kamara to address.
Although the whole nation is living in fear, which has exacerbated our hardships, Dr Samura Kamara as expected is doing as the SLPP would expect by discouraging people from exercising their constitutional guarantee of a peaceful demonstration.
Dissuading civilians from wanting to take to the streets to protest because they will be shot plays right into the ruling party’s strategy. Since Konneh announced Bio as winner Dr Samura has never made a public appearance where he is encouraging or speaking to his supporters, except at his poorly organised press statements or meetings at the party office.
While protest action would have driven home the people’s point about their displeasure with the elections result, they were detained by Dr Samura Kamara speaking on behalf of the ruling party government and president.
The people of Sierra Leone who said president Bio lost the 24 June elections have said Dr Samura Kamara is too quiet, furthering that his passivism is not what is needed to take on a stubborn, determined, clever, tricky, untrustworthy and conniving client as the Paopa regime headed by president Julius Maada Bio. Instead of taking the fight to president Bio, Dr Samura Kamara has been preventing others from doing so.
During the entire time since 2018 when the APC and their supporters across the country were quiet and fearful of saying anything against the New Direction regime, especially their corruption and state sponsored violence against the opposition, the only person that exposed the SLPP regime for what they were doing that was against what they had promised was Adebayor.
The young social media personality and activist has been the official voice of the opposition when Dr Samura and others were very quiet. Adebayor has been blamed by this irresponsible and elections stealing regime for all the protests actions and subsequent deaths that followed at the hands of state security officers. After repeated calls by the president and his partisans for the APC to distant itself from Adebayor, Dr Samura Kamara, we have been reliably informed by media reports is going to publically distance himself and the APC from the staunch APC supporter, Adebayor.
Should Dr Samura Kamara do this he would have helped solved president Bio and the SLPP’s longest running problem for which they have tried everything, including demanding Adebayor be extradited from Holland. He would have finally silenced Bio’s longest and most effective critic.
It must be recalled that Adebayor more than any individual or organisation in this country is considered the pulse of the nation for his uncanny ability to be able to predict what the SLPP is about to or is planning on doing. The people of this country, including members of the APC, listen to him and do exactly as he demands of them, even to stay home in protest against the regime. Ernest Bai Koroma ‘never paid Maada Bio no mind’ when he called for Ernest Bai Koroma to openly criticise and denounce Adebayor.
However, willing to please, and after Adebayor blasted Dr Samura Kamara for secretly meeting with the SLPP unbeknownst to his party and or supporters, the embattled APC leader and former flagbearer, it would seem, is about to put the final nail on the coffin of his political career.
Taking on Adebayor at the behest of president Maada Bio and the SLPP would be Dr Samura Kamara’s greatest activity on behalf of the SLPP that would spell the beginning of the end of Kamara’s exit from the public space. Going against Adebayor would be foolhardy.
