By Hassan Osman Kargbo
It’s now quite clear that there will be no re-run election after the Tripartite Committee’s recommendations. Even though before this time, the main opposition APC party with their supporters were thinking of a re-run for the June 24 multi-tie election, but it seems like things didn’t go their favour. The recommendations didn’t mention anything about re-run or nor re-run and so the APC party need to start restructuring their party and get ready for the 2028 elections.
It is high time the party should step forward and try to restructure only if they want to march to State House come 2028. The part and its hierarchies have wasted time and their resources in the quest for a re-run election and at the end it was a fruitless endeavour.
One of the things the party should consider whiles preparing for the 2028 elections, the APC must deviate from that policy of reliance on international support to get victory. It is seen in the just concluded Tripartite Committee’s recommendations where the APC before this time relayed on the international partners to work-the-work for them forging that the incumbent President Bio led dispensation had already captured the heart and minds of those international partners in the country.
The party must do the needful at home and abroad if they wanted to get victory come 2028. The party must be positively radical in its actions and if it should win power, it must prove its positive determination in that direction. The APC must set itself in motion to bring a radical and focused leadership that is committed and determined to answer to the call and demands of his party, especially that which is aspired for by the party’s growing radical youthful population. That’s why many say Dr Samura Kamara is lacking behind and they think that, it’s the main reason Dr Samura Kamara and his APC executives had failed to penetrate. But, looking at Dr Samura Kamara’s age and giving his manifested inability to respond to the call of the radical ways in politics, majority of his party supporters and in the struggles of the APC to win power had called on this current regime of the APC party to bow out and give way to a radically transformative leadership that could lead them to State House in 2028. The days of marginalization and looking up to the old folks in the APC must end now at this moment when the party is at a critical crossroads.
Dr Samura Kamara, giving his own inaction and indecisive character as a leader who has contested for power twice, has lost the confidence and trust of most APC members and followers and indeed majority of the party’s admirers and sympathisers.
Dr Samura Kamara and his executive need to follow the steps of President Joe Biden in the USA who has gracefully stepped down and out of the Democratic Party’s Presidential race for reasons associated with his age and his demonstrated mental incongruity thereby easing the stress of causing unnecessary cracks and deep divisions in his party, so it is expected of Dr Samura Kamara in order to maintain his integrity.
The mind game he and his followers have been playing around the Tripartite Committee and its subsequent recommendations aimed at keeping his stranglehold on the party’s leadership has slammed at his face.
Many things had happened, before, during and after the June 24 election, Dr Samura Kamara has not come out to explain to his party comrades. He has not explained to his party the rational and the outcome of his clandestine meeting allegedly coordinated by the Catholic Archbishop with the president at a certain undisclosed location in Freetown and many other allegations surrounded Dr Samura Kamara and his expired executive. No wonder, it is being muted widely that he may have been compromised by his Catholicism and religious fraternity with President Bio.
However, besides Dr Samura Kamara’s apparent determination to continue hanging on to the leadership of the APC party; which is a dangerous thing many say that has the possibility of exploding and damaging the APC deep from the centre, another major bottleneck in achieving a democratically cohesive party in the forward march to possibly winning the 2028 elections, is the conundrum of the move by a certain ethnic groups to assert hegemony over the party to appear as if the APC party is an inheritance to them. Some ethnic group like, the Limbas, Temnes, and Lokos of the party have dominate the existence, contributions and sacrifices of other tribes mainly in the North and North-west much to their dissatisfaction and deep chagrin. By all indications so far, this move, if insisted on, will have a debilitating effect on the cohesion and chance of victory of the party in 2028.
This is the time the APC and current dispensation need to put all hands on deck, if only they want to go to State House in 2028. This time round, the APC should follow its mission and vision, not the selfish interests of a group of desperados. The APC should look to the leadership qualities and abilities of the likes of Dr Kaifala Marah, Hon. Chrenor Ramadan Maju Bah, Dr. Richard Konteh, Ambassador Alimamy Petito Koroma, Alfred Paolo Conteh and Alhaji Samuel Sidique Sam-Sumana and many more young folks in the APC. The APC party is never short of presidential materials.
In the struggles of the APC, there is victory for us ahead only if the prepare very well to march to State House in 2028.
