By Titus Boye-Thompson, Prampram, Ghana

In all the events following November 26th 2023, nothing stands out more than the entrapment of Ernest Bai Koroma, former President of the Republic of Sierra Leone. To the casual observer, it is easy to make that link between the former President and his former bodyguards who have variously and copiously been described as best aa security breaches and at worse as assailants but nowhere does any of the narratives point to a pari-parsu case of their ever, and more importantly together with the former President being involved in a coup plot. So in the absence of that very essence of what lawyers would call an “actus reum,” I stand here and say boldly that I stand with Ernest Bai Koroma.

Incidentally, many with more rational minds are beginning you come to this very same conclusion. The recent visit of Presidents of Ghana, Senegal and the ECOWAS has made this point very clear and without ambiguity. The Minister of Information, Communications and Civic affairs seem to be lost on his own spin. What can be gleaned from the official notes of the visit is clear that these eminent persons now view the events in Sierra Leone as very grave and tending towards insecurity. The State has a duty to present itself before the people as an open and transparent administration of justice and constitutionality at all times. For the Minister to engage in such a rampage of disinformation to misrepresent the diplomatic prerequisites of our membership of such a major regional body as ECOWAS can only be construed as a deliberate attempt to make the suspect fit the crime.Ernest Bai Koroma in my eyes is being vilified because the government is of the opinion that knobbling him reduces the chances of their holding on to power. To reduce the functionality of the APC can only be done by reducing the effectiveness of its leaders to perform their functions. This is not only wrong of their tenets but invariably precocious as a strategy to dismantle dissent. They tried this same strategy prior to the 2023 elections but failed so woefully that they had to steal the elections wholesale in order to stay in power. Now the resorting to an entrapment and prejudicing of those with influence within the APC can only do more harm than good. It is for this reason that the Senegalese President stated that their visit and discussions were aimed at reducing the tensions that have now followed November 26th. The Ghana and Semegal Presidents, together with the ECOWAS President have sent a firm message that they stand with Ernest Bai Koroma.

The potential for a lasting peace starts and rests with the government. There is no gainsaying that this duty must never be lost on those who wield power. You have to use the power you wield for good and not for evil otherwise there can be no eventual winner in the practice of a politics of retribution.

I stand with Ernest Bai Koroma because this attempt to disgrace him is going to become a self-inflicted wound on the office holders of the Presidency of Sierra Leone. This act will be followed by more acts of retribution and the SLPP cannot guarantee being in power forever, only on the grounds that an APC government will kill all Mendes. This narrative is one of the most baseless tomfoolery in the practice of tribal politics but they keep using it as a ruse to scare people from the South East to vote APC.

I stand by Ernest Bai Koroma for the immense human interest in how he is being treated. As a former President of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma has worked hard on building an international reputation for peace and democracy across Africa. This charge against him falls very much short of the evidence and goes against the weight of the balance of probabilities. There are very flimsy and tenuous links that are being drawn out to look like he is a villain but these tactics fail at first scrutiny. The doubts over the sequence of events immediately following November 26, shows that the present situation is derived from an orchestration. Sierra Leoneans and now many in the international community are beginning to follow the candlelight to it an source and what is emerging does not look like a coup plot!

I stand by Ernest Bai Koroma because no one has shown me the smoking gun.