As the fallout from the announced 24 June presidential elections results continues to unfold, members and supporters of the party in power are beginning to worry about their own safety and security from the long arm of the law, and western sanctions.
This fear factor of collective responsibility, complicit or implicit, has hit the rank and file of elected politicians, many who say they see signs of worry in the principal.
This is worrying because they have not been paid and are on a break, after the whole country is at a loss for words as to what work was done besides being sworn in and approving appointed executives.
So far, it is said that DFID, the EU, US, UK, Irish, Germans, ECOWAS, Guinea and other lending institutions have all laid sanctions that have started to bear fruit. Those whose salaries were getting paid by such countries and agencies have not been getting paid some have been given their marching orders.
As if to hit home the seriousness of the refusal by western and continental nations and organisations, the International Criminal Court – ICC, not known for getting involved in elections dispute resolutions, has demanded a meeting with our chief executive if he attends the next big enchilada slated for the UN on Tuesday, 19 September 2023 in New York. The ICC is in The Hague.
The wording of the invitation letter, which reads like the ones police departments send requesting to meet wanted or persons of interest in a matter, has caused many in the party to sanction the executive to have one of those expected to be part of the bilateral meeting with the ICC to attend in his stead. Since the letter is not clear about if there are charges made against the principal, they advise that he is not under legal obligation to attend and can instead send a representative.
Reportedly the principal’s surrogates are worried about the implications of these unveiling situations, which they see as threatening. Usually when such actions are taken they are taken against the principal, mostly as a result of what others had done. Since he is the one that appoints them, then collective responsibility is shared for his subordinates’ actions.
Speculations are rife that our principal is being invited not for the elections results but possibly because a case bordering on human rights abuses, as this is clearly what the ICC is all about, has been made against him, or the ICC is taking one based on provided evidence. The ICC and prosecutors generally don’t take cases to court they are not confident of winning. Plenty of the scientific approach goes into these preliminary investigations that when they add up informs the prosecutors that they have a case.
By default being part of whatever the ICC might be inviting the principal for means that you also share the brunt or greatest responsibility.
Weeks back members of the Sierra Leone community protested in western countries and dropped letters of complaints to the heads of government of the US, UK, the ICC at Hague and elsewhere tabulating serious human and other rights abuses by those under our principal, action under his direct command as commander in chief of all our forces. Many have said issues relating to his time as head of state of the past republic including but not limited to the execution of James Bambay Kamara and others were never forgotten. Sierra Leoneans in the diaspora have said they organised the protest actions and dropped dossiers listing atrocities under the principal for the consideration of those they were delivered to. Receiving the correspondences such people had promised to take action. Not long ago our principal promised that his people will not kill anymore while trying to coax us to come out and celebrate our last Independence Day, which we haven’t celebrated since 2018. We must remember that the ICC head prosecutor assured the Republic of Sierra Leone of his highest consideration in his letter to the principal.
It must be recalled that the Millennium Challenge Corporation – MCC of the US has frozen some of its support to the government for not fulfilling the requirement on free, fair and credible elections, which is the mission of the MCC, to promote democratic good governance and respect for the rule and application of the law, ruling justly, free and fair election. DFID we were told stopped paying the Judiciary, with many others in some ministries and Fort Thornton also not getting paid.
By insisting on the nation’s electoral commission to release their polling results as tabulated from polling centres from across the country, these western countries that had poling agents at all the stations across the country, which the main opposition was unable to do due to machination and intimidations, are saying that their results and those of the ESCL do not match. They are certain of this and are demanding our electoral commissioner release the results, which he is vehemently opposed to as if releasing the results would harm him.
By his singular action not to do as demanded, for which the electoral laws dictate he does, the commissioner is holding the whole nation hostage and has rendered the principal a leader not enjoying the people’s mandate to lead, a judiciary that cannot be trusted, and a house that is playing politics with the truth by wishing on a prayer that the opposition will return to work in the name of national unity and cohesion, things the principal and the ECSL didn’t consider before accepting the result and releasing them respectively that have caused our national stalemate that is an embarrassment to all well-meaning Sierra Leoneans devoid of political or tribal considerations.
As the political drama is unfolding the people of Sierra Leone have now come to see their leaders as mere men, not the gods they had been purporting to be all along. When one considers what is happening in west Africa, the US with Trump, South Africa with Jacob Zuma, Brazil with presidents and others, it is high time this nation starts respecting fair play and respect for rules instead of respect for persons and or personalities. They are also men capable of doing even worse than we think.
My country people, by their actions our elected leaders have caused us to lose millions of dollars of international support. If this continues without a solution to our current stalemate then we the people that such actions really affect will suffer for our leaders’ inactions. The donated money is for development purposes such as provisions of water, good healthcare, electricity, roads and so much that our leaders have failed to provide us since we became a sovereign nation.
In closing, members of the Sierra Leone enterprise under the principal, from then to now, should be worried that corporate responsibility is the norm for being a leader in a democracy. Leadership comes with responsibility. You are responsible for the actions of those you hire!
