By Sayoh Kekus Kamara
There is a popular saying that: “Truth is a moral weapon.” Moral truth therefore is when a moral statement accurately corresponds to reality. The moral obligation to tell the truth stems from commonsense, which morally recognizes a moral obligation on each of us to tell the truth.
The justification for this is that it is a basic moral principle, rule or value. Truth-telling makes possible freedom and trust between people, and, in the life of faith, it makes possible closeness to God. People of good-will must always be willing to demand truth-telling because no one should be treated as if they were not worthy of being told the truth. To reap from the truth it must be cultivated from the truth.
It is on these bases that Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara must be sincere enough to the tell the All Peoples Congress (APC) party and its grassroots supporters the truth and nothing but the truth about the re-run of the June 24, 2023 Presidential election. Let him and his blind supporters stop fooling the people on an agenda that is an impossible mission and allow the party to engage in structural engineering to fit its purpose for the next National Delegates Conference and indeed the 2028 elections.
By all indications, this issue is the biggest dividing factor the party is grappling with and if this is not achieved has the tendency of splitting the party and hindering its chances of winning power and forming a government to serve the people. The writing is evidently clear on the wall to achieving this but not in the absence of truth being told.
The fact is that the recommendations from the Tripartite Committee did not converge on a re-run of the Presidential election. It was a position put forward by the APC party representatives and therefore it is a divergent matter; and its implementation by means possible is stalled because the Tripartite Committee was an ad hoc setup and has no legal fiat to force its implementation. That is a fact and that is the truth.
The APC party did not go to court in the first instance because it lacked the necessary evidential materials to give the party the lucus standi to make a case. Even during the Tripartite Committee engagements, the party couldn’t present 100% of its Result Reconciliation Forms (RRF) to still justify the case outrightly that Dr. Samura Kamara won the elections. These are all facts and the truth.
There are eighty (80) recommendations that both the APC and SLPP Tripartite Representatives were convergent on and implementation of these which are mostly directed at electoral reforms and ensuring electoral justice are set for implementation with the “bad guy” in all this connundrum, the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) saying they are up and ready for the implementation of recommendations related to them, safe for the resignation of persons named. Those convergent issues are not being contested by Dr. Samura Kamara.
The divergent issue is the re-run of the Presidential election. This divergent issue is what both parties did not agree on. This is a fact. This is where lies the missing link between truth-telling and misinformation aimed at deviating attention from reality to myth.
I believe that it is because the truth is being hidden and misinformation being peddled in the ears and minds of vulnerable and susceptible grassroots supporters, the much needed unity and forward-looking vision of the APC party is being eroded and replaced with vitriol, invectives and character assassination, using reckless elements who are equally vulnerable like the APC’s unsuspecting grassroots supporters.
This is more the unrealistic cause for the beckoning of this nonsensical and abhorrent statement of “No Dr. Samura, no APC” largely attributed to the Dr. Samura campaign camp bloggers and misinformists. This falls short of the show of gratitude to the APC for the opportunity accorded to Dr. Samura to run for two consecutive times as the party’s flagbearer; an opportunity he would never have had on his own merits if not from the APC and its wider membership. This is a factual truth.
One is bound to accept disagreements in a political party if it was the case with individual political perspectives, but to attack the characters and integrity of decent people within by people claiming to be APC party members and supporters and using faceless nomenclatures and irrational so-called Bloggers is, absolutely and definitely reprehensible and damning to the chances of building political cohesiveness necessary for a political party wanting to win political power.
For me and many Sierra Leoneans, Dr. Samura Kamara should come clear on the re-run matter and tell the truth as he knows it, and as he had been told to know which was more the reason why he signed the Tripartite Committee’s final report. There is clear indication that Dr. Samura Kamara is making a veil push for his so-called electoral justice because of deliberate failure to have used the channels to electoral justice for obvious reasons.
I am therefore calling on Dr. Samura Kamara to be the leader he is to stop deceiving the people with his veiled push for electoral justice that can never be achieved to let the APC be; to move on with the business of reforming the party in readiness for the 2028 general elections.
I am also appealing to those in support of Dr. Samura Kamara in his veiled advocacy for a re-run of the June 24, 2023 Presidential election and are seeing him as an Avatar of their veiled hope to cool down the pace of acidity, venomity, acrimony and divisiveness and see reason to give the party’s executives to move on with their constitutional fiat to the party for the good of the people of Sierra Leone.
What at stake now is the party’s membership registration drive kicked off on July 31, 2024.
This is very crucial for the way forward for the APC party. It is an exercise that every APC party member or intended member should comply with as a way of consolidating the party’s base. For people like Alhaji Kemoh Sesay to come out to deny to participate in the exercise and to condemn the exercise is quite unfortunate in our view, as it tells the level at which the misconception of the Tripartite Committee recommendations has gone; such a move, in my view, will only slow progress of the party and continue to hold it at bay for want of an illusive electoral justice. A review of the party’s register is crucially important. Verifying the register and bringing in many more is a constitutional requirement that should garner to support of all truly APCians. This process must go on and must be logically concluded.
It would therefore be soothing for all executive members of the APC party at Ward, District and Regional levels to come together and help bring sense to their members with truth and help revitalize this membership and grassroots network.
It is only when the APC party stands together would they work to “re-engage their base and renew their commitment for a stronger party vision, values and goals, that can ensure the APC remains a powerful force for progress and positive change.
I am calling for unity across the board; I urge for constructive engagements in order to build a stronger APC party that is ready to take up governance.
So, whether the remaining issues if the Tripartite Committee findings remain divergent or convergent, Dr. Samura Kamara must just be truthful about his insistence on election re-run and let the APC be.
