The All Political Parties Association’s recent press statement issued last Tuesday 12 July 2022, during a news conference held at the New Brookfields Hotel in Freetown did not go down well with majority of Sierra Leoneans.
The association (APPA-SL) spoke about the recent controversial Mid-Term and Population Census, the infamous Proportional Representative (PR) Bill now before the House of Parliament for debate, and the Consortium of Progressive Political Parties (COPPP). These, among several other issues highlighted in the APPA-SL’s unfortunate statement, have been described by so many actors in the democratic process as very much misleading, as it does not represent the best interests of the people of Sierra Leone, neither for the good of the country’s growing democracy.
APPA-SL Secretary General, Ibrahim S. Sesay said: “APPA-SL calls for the use of Proportional Representative (PR) system in the forthcoming national elections…” was a statement described by many citizens who spoke to SALONE COMPASS NEWSPAPER as undermining citizens’ trust and a tempter to rogue the people off their much needed advocacy from a political association they had expected to defend their citizenship goodwill.
Sesay said that the holding of the controversial Mid-Term Housing and Population Census result has been nationally and international discredited.
“APPA-SL has been following Stat-SL with keen interest since President Julius Maada Bio made the proclamation for Stat-SL to conduct a Midterm Census. As an organization, we aware during the many engagements we had with Stat-SL as critical stakeholders in the process, that the purpose of the census was to collect, compile, evaluate, analyze, publish and disseminate demographic, sociological and economic statistics of the country’s population, as well as statistics data of residential occupants using Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI)…As political parties, we followed enough the process that included cartographic mapping where Stat-SL showed us material evidence of all localities in Sierra Leone. By that, they assured us that they would provide pinpoint accuracy of all localities in Sierra Leone and provide codes to each of them. This was achieved during the main census enumeration.”
These according to them have seen the statement uttered by the APPA-SL as disregarding the people’s interest because, many say allowing such a census that has left a huge number of citizens uncounted to reflect an international policy is detrimental to the nation, as the figures obtained does not reflect the exact population of the country.
APPA-SL also lambasted COPPP as going on a tactics of misleading the public and trying to stir divisiveness within political parties to fuel the flame of incessant threat and discord in the state.
“APPA-SL wishes to state categorically that the renegade people COPPP are using are not representing those parties, as their cry of wolf tactics is to stir divisiveness within political parties…”
However, people say what COPPP has so far done in representing the interests of the people has not yet been seen in APPA-SL. An observer said APPA-SL is just a proxy of the government of the day, thereby backing the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in all their missing in action strategies in salvaging the problems of the country, and that most of the way-out directions of the SLPP normally result to added burden on the people.
