Did Sierra Leoneans at home and the world over, including members and supporters of the opposition All People’s Congress APC saw it all coming against them?
That the outcome of the much anticipated recommendations of the Tripartite Committee will certainly leave no for a re-run of the June 24 presidential election. Was the more reason for Dr Kaifala Marrah’s recent news conference hosted at 11A Old Railway Line, Brookfields frantically tried at managing the expectations of APC members and followers?
Dr Marrah, a former APC presidential aspirant, who represents the party as a Co-chair at the already ‘discredited’ Tripartite Committee sounded as a mere insider, who informed his party’s leadership and comrades about recent development in the election investigation committee. He actually helped in managing APC partisans’ expectations about the coming events by skilfully stopping short from saying anything about a re-run of the June presidential polls.
Briefing the APC leadership and members on Wednesday 24 April 2024, Dr Marrah encouraged all to ‘exercise restraint and not pre-empt the outcomes of the Committee’s examination exercise, adding that; ‘This is the position of the party leaders including Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, Hon. Chernor Ramadan Maju Bah’. He sounded very much like he had already been clued by someone else on the committee that no matter the outcome, there will be no re-run of the June 24 controversial presidential election.
Going by Dr Marrah’s statement, it appears as if the election investigation processed has already been done and dusted long ago. So, there is no need to be crying wolf with blame shifting everywhere among APC members and followers, maybe that is why he encouraged all to restrain and wait for the official declarations of the outcome of the recommendations of the committee. What has been done can be hardly reverse. The APC party must therefore continue on a clearly new path with a fresh strategic vision aimed at taking over governance democratically whenever soonest or later.
Fast forward shortly after Dr Marrah’s news conference in Freetown, then renewed legal means debate, now anchoring on why APC leaders refused to pursue the matter of challenging the ‘invalidated’ presidential results. Perhaps it is due to lack of public confidence and trust in independent of the Sierra Leone judiciary. Yet, one of the APC legal representatives, Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara Esq earlier advised the APC leadership to use the judicial process at least for the records to challenge the results which the party didn’t do. Lawyer Kamara still firmly holds the view that the APC party should have use the judicial process in seeking means of redress, but he is being regarded a devil’s advocate.
Like Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara Esq, the United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Bryan David Hunt, once a staunch defender of democracy on arrival in the country, now appears to have placed himself under severe bashing from all quarters for his ‘unfair’ remarks about the reversal of the re-run of the June 24 election. He continues to argue that the opposition APC didn’t go to court to challenge the result with the legitimate stipulated one week period during which they/APC could have seek a redress at the Supreme Court about the conduct of the flawed June 24 presidential election.
Joined by the US diplomat is the governing Sierra Leone Co-chair at the Committee, Dr Emmanuel Giama; a Special Adviser on Local Government at State House, said in a recent newspaper report that, ‘in no uncertain terms that the Tripartite Committee is not the competent authority to call for election nor the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone but only the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, which has never received any complaint seven days after the June 24, 2023 national elections and that rumours going round is misinformation. Gaima argues that the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone Act No5 states that there should be a Public Election Act which was amended in 2022, which reads; ‘In an extreme presidential election, anybody who is aggrieved about the outcome has seven working days to make an official complaint in the Supreme Court’. He pointed out that since the 2023 national elections ended, no political party made a formal complaint to the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone…, a position many ruling party members and supporters firmly hold as their saving grace.
Does Dr Marrah want to tell the world that he had got clue of all these was the exact reason for his crisis management press conference so that the APC can start preparing the hearts and minds their members and followers should in case the outcome of the committee recommendations are loudly read out to the APC party’s public against the wishes and aspirations, they should restrain themselves from any reactions?
Over and above all, what is being learnt from these is complete tyrannical rule of the President Julius Maada Bio-led SLPP has been oppressing the leadership of the APC, internal leadership failures within the APC, double standards and the likes contribute largely to relegate what used to be a vibrant opposition in Sierra Leone democratic dispensation.
Moving forward a new leaf needs to be urgently turned with a visionary leadership spirit that won’t stop in its way in democratically unseating Bio and the SLPP when once national elections are scheduled.
But Tripartite Committee recommendations are no longer anything to go for a re-run of the ‘widely flawed June 24 elections.
