According to political analysts and ranking stalwarts in both the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and main opposition All People’s Congress (APC), outgoing president Julius Maada Bio is set to disappoint the hopes and aspirations of ruling partisans and Sierra Leoneans who are hopeful that the embattled leader will repeat his winning forms of the 2018 and 2023 presidential elections.
The seasoned politicians say the SLPP will get disappointed if they put all their hopes on president Bio repeating his highly debatable two term winnings during the 2028 presidential elections.
‘First of all, president Bio will never be frank enough to tell the SLPP his mind. Instead of focusing on how to win the 2028 presidential vote, Maada Bio is presently busy trying to ensure a smooth sail into his retirement. Although we do not see him playing the same elder statesman role former president Ernest Bai Koroma has been performing so well with his APC partisans, we think he is hopeful enough to think he will get such an offer from the international community the same way Koroma worked things out after his second and 2012 win,’ stated a member of the new SLPP executive headed by party chairman Jimmy Batilo Songa.
The SLPP strongman averred that the party is aware and expects Bio, as one that is expected to soon step aside for another flagbearer and running mate duo to step up to the fore, to be consolidating and focused on his own agenda as opposed to the party’s.
‘There is the expectation and understanding from SLPP executive that the president is not too concerned with the party’s 2028 performance as opposed to his exit from the national scene and politics in particular. The party will do poorly if we depend on Bio to ensure we win 2028. We know that the voters of Sierra Leone from all sides of the political divide are tired with the way things have turned out since 2018 to date, especially after the 2023 election dispute. At present the Bio is busy ensuring that – things work out in his favour after 2028; which concern has been the prerogative of every post war president – from late Kabbah Tejan Ahmed and Koroma Bai Ernest. We have learned as a party and government the dangers of consolidating power in one hand,’ the SLPP executive informed FORUM NEWS.
According to certain members of the current APC executive the focus of the ruling party is to ensure that president Maada Bio leaves power in a respectful and dignified manner, not being haunted by trials and forfeiture of property and or assets. Former party executives who commented on how the 2018 election was a stage managed affair that was meant to keep EBK and other APC big boys from being prosecuted, alleged that Bio double crossed Ernest Bai Koroma by approving the commissions of inquiries, and should expect the same when he steps down from power.
Will the next APC leader and president of Sierra Leone go down that path? That is left to be determined by the shadows of coming political events.
‘The SLPP and so many Sierra Leoneans are going to be disappointed by president Bio if their focus is on him guaranteeing them another packaged electoral victory as he did in 2023 through the ‘manipulation’ of event. You have to understand that it will be up to the international community if Bio and members of his administration face the courts over the 29 Apr 2020 massacres at Pademba Road Prison, on 10 August 2022, those in Makeni, Lunsar, Tombo and all other places where citizens lost their lives under the Maada Bio regime. How things pan out for Bio is all a matter of the closed door negotiations that are currently going on to ensure his smooth transition from a former president to one that is retired,’ the APC don stated.
Meanwhile, talks of a third term agenda by president Bio, including him stating that he does not plan on handing power over to the APC, have been downplayed by the APC as ‘talking tough’, ‘posturing’ and the like.
‘Bio knows that he has to keep saying that his party will not hand power over to the APC so as to keep those party-pekins in his SLPP party satisfied, although we do not see how he plans on winning after his poor state governance performance. Actually all we have had from Maada Bio since 2018 are ways of enriching the SLPP instead of fulfilling campaign promises. Since we do not want this country to revert back to civil war we are worried about what looks like the consolidation of power in Maada Bio by certain members of his party government who are naïve enough to think that the SLPP can win a third term if the votes were free, fair and credible. The only way the SLPP can win 2028 is by hook or crook; there is no other way besides reverting to the violence that the party government used to respond to a citizenry that was against its plans and or actions. We can assure the people of Sierra Leone that there will not be any room for electoral fraud as we and all the parties in opposition are prepared for a change in the status quo; the SLPP’s third term agenda is dead on arrival because this party government only focused on doing the will of the presidency and party in power as opposed to those of the people’s,’ the APC executive told FORUM NEWS.
A University of Sierra Leone political scientist, however, asked a poignant question that no one was prepared to answer: What is there to stop the SLPP from going a third term if they win again? What will the APC and others do if the 2028 vote ends up being a repeat of the 2023 vote?
