In preparation for the 2028 general and presidential elections, the main opposition political party All Peoples Congress (APC) has abandoned the fight to establish who won the 2023 presidential race between incumbent president Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) and Dr. Samura Kamara of the APC.
Comments by leading party executives have indicated and made known the opposition party’s new stance on the electoral impasse the flagbearer is still trying to resolve. The most recent was made in the House of Parliament by the minority leader, Abdul Kargbo last week.
After diplomatic agencies and international elections observer bodies immediately rejected the announcement by the chief electoral commissioner announcing the incumbent as the winner of the 24 June, 2023, elections, the APC executives were united behind their flagbearer openly rejecting the result alongside the objecting members of the international community.
According to the US, EU, UK, Germany, France, Ireland, ECOWAS, AU, Carter Centre and the local National Election Watch (NEW), the announced result was statistically inconsistent and not reflective of the actual vote. Without presenting any evidence to qualify their objection, the international community has yet to declare the 2023 presidential election as free, fair, and credible.
Ms Samba of the NEW disclosed that according to their Results Reconciliation Forms (RRFs) neither the president nor the challenger got the 55 per cent constitutional threshold, announcing to the country and international community that the election should have gone to a runoff instead of the incumbent being declared winner. The APC party also released RRFs gathered from 70 per cent of the polling stations nationwide showing their flagbearer in a commanding 57 per cent lead, which is over the constitutional threshold for Dr. Samura Kamara to be declared winner. However, the ruling party government and the electoral commissioner have failed to present RRFs and the raw voting data per station to show how the president won his re-election, despite repeated demands and calls. According to the APC, their RRFs were collected from areas the party had polling agents which excluded areas considered SLPP strongholds citing threats of and actual political violence. The APC speaking as a unified executive on the matter insisted that based on their vote returns it was impossible for president Bio to have won on first ballot.
But after a year of trying and still failing to be granted access to the disaggregated voting record from the ECSL, after the dialogue that brought the APC back after the unified party had boycotted taking part in the government in response to the announced result, after the communiqué and the Tripartite Committee and their submitted 80 recommendations for electoral reforms, and after a year of Dr. Samura Kamara promising his supporters that a rerun will be possible, impatience has taken hold of the APC executives.
While a large section of the party’s executives and grassroots supporters are behind Dr. Samura Kamara’s advocacy to restore what they believe is a stolen presidential mandate to the true winner on the day (believed to be Dr. Samura), certain key APC stalwarts have started speaking against the advocacy as unrealistic after a year of president Bio still in power and seemingly consolidating his gains heading into his second year of the second term. There are calls in the media for Dr. Samura to stop deceiving and misleading his supporters that there will be a rerun of last year’s presidential election.
In a development that has informed political pundits to speculate as spelling the end of Dr. Samura Kamara’s ambition and promise to protect stolen votes, the APC party executives have called and started a nationwide drive to register members and supporters for the party’s lower level elections to fill critical positions in preparation for the 2028 presidential election cycle. Although many of Dr. Samura Kamara’s supporters have resisted the registration drive and spoken out against the decision terming it the executives abandoning the fight to establish the true winner of last year’s presidential election and ditching the party’s leader and flagbearer, the party has meanwhile continued with its registration drive across the country.
“Everyone knows that Dr. Samura Kamara won last year’s presidential election. The APC and people who voted for change were cheated by the electoral commissioner and the incumbent president who has every public institution under his thumb by the simple fact that he also hired them all. But after a year with no change even after the Tripartite Committee, president Bio is not going to be willing to step down. This is a fact we must deal with. There has never been electoral justice in Sierra Leone and we will not see it under president Bio. We don’t want Dr. Samura to keep giving the people a false sense of hope that president Bio will either step down or allow for a rerun which would mean that he has admitted and accepted that the election result declaring him winner was manipulated and makes way for the electoral commissioner to be prosecuted for electoral fraud. The ruling party government protects their members in and from the justice system. That is why we boycotted the courts to resolve this matter because we don’t expect the judges to give an unbiased or uninfluenced decision. So we are not against Dr. Samura Kamara chasing this dream but we are a political institution with structures and laws and procedures that we must abide to. The party can be preparing for 2028 by getting our house in order. Should Dr Samura’s advocacy for electoral justice succeed then we will be able and ready to gladly form the next government of Sierra Leone,” said an APC executive that spoke to FORUM NEWS.
The well liked APC stalwart together with some APC grassroots members alleged that the campaign to protect the people’s stolen votes is a “get-out-of-jail card” being played by the APC flagbearer aimed at freeing himself from the government’s cases against his person. They alleged that there is no light at the end of the tunnel to resolving the 2023 presidential election result fiasco, and called on Dr. Samura Kamara and his supporters to see the wisdom in getting the party’s house in order while they (the doctor and his local and international supporters) continue on with their advocacy for electoral justice in Sierra Leone.
“Yes the party has abandoned the 2023 elections result fight. We are now preparing to get State House back in 2028 no matter what tricks the SLPP government employs,” the ranking APC executive promised.
