By Hassan Osman Kargbo
It is not a secret that there were lots of discrepancies before, during and after the June 24 multi-tier election that resulted to local and international election observers rejected the Presidential result pronounced by the Chief Electoral Commissioner of the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone, Mohamed Kenewui Konneh.
The main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) also wasted no time to joined the line of local and international election observers to reject the June 24 presidential result that eventually led the APC party releasing statement refraining all their elected parliamentarians, councilors, mayors, districts chairpersons not to partake in any governance of the state until and unless the ECSL release the disaggregated data to the general public.
This called by the main opposition APC party was seen by many as a great step in the right direction considering the wide spread allegations against the ECSL boss, commissioners and staff to have stolen the mandate of the majority in the country.
The main opposition presidential candidate, Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara alongside the party national executives are on records that they will not comprise any situations with the ECSL and the government of Sierra Leone unless the ECSL explain to the APC party and the people of Sierra Leone how they came about arriving at the said result without proper tallying and tabulation process carried out before announcing Julius Maada Bio of the governing Sierra Leone People’s Party as the winner of the June 24 presidential polls.
The decision made by APC not to partake in governance warranted the formation, setting up and running of the Commission of Peace and National Cohesion and other international partners to organized a three-day dialogue that many saw as an opportunity for the opposition APC to stress their stance to establish a case for a re-run in the table that would have seen the Bio’s regime out of governance after the highly anticipated re-run election.
After the three-day dialogue, many Sierra Leoneans were shocked upon hearing the outcomes of the event stands contrary to the expectation of the majority that should have changed the face of the country’s democracy.
Many APC supporters are of the opinion that the party only focused on their own selfish needs and forsake the expectations of the majority of Sierra Leoneans that voted massively in the June 24 polls against the Bio-led administrations.
However, those APC supporters are of the candid option that due to hypocrisy on the side of APC politicians shattered what the majority view as a possibility. Despite the alarming level of poverty and degradation suffering of the masses, the APC party couldn’t stand farm to defend the votes of the majority which many say it is a day-light robbery in the country backed by the hypocrite of the Dr. Samura Karama – led APC makes it impossible for the party to have put the ECSL and the Government of Sierra Leone on their toes to make public the disaggregated data.
Furthermore, the political hypocrisy of most Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the country also took center stage before, during and after the mediated dialogue. It came out very clearly that majority of the CSOs can’t speak to the realities and facts as they are but rather those CSOs will prefer to sweep the facts or realities under the carpet for political recognition and compensation.
Despite all the facts that are associated with the outcome of the disputed June 24 polls, CSOs refused to stand tall to tell the ECSL and the government of Sierra Leone the indisputable truth. On the contrary, CSOs regularly come out to lavish praises on government and other officials for their own selfish interests. It is disheartening to see some CSOs publicly toeing the line of a government that only focuses on raining untold suffering on the masses.
CSOs and the oppositions really need to stand for the masses in the country; rather they are all over the place doing things for their own interest which is clearly seeing as hypocrisy to the highest degree.
