OPEN LETTER TO THE POLITICAL PARTIES’ REGISTRATION COMMISSION (PPRC) CHAIRPERSON

Email: info@pprc.gov.sl / pprcsierraleone@yahoo.com

The Hon. Abdulai Masianday Bangura,

Chairman,

Political Parties’ Registration Commission (PPRC)

OAU Drive,

Tower Hill,

Freetown.

12th November, 2022

Dear Chairman,

RE: CONDUCT OF THE INTERIM TRANSITION GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE (ITGC)

I write in reaction to correspondence on the captioned dated 11th November purporting to have emanated from your office, extending an invitation to “Elders and Senior Members” of the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) Party to a meeting on Monday 14th with your good self on the conduct of the ITGC which, as you have rightly noted, are not complimentary to the “health and well-being of the (APC) Party”. My own names are listed as No.16.

I thank you warmly for such a high consideration but regret I have to decline the invitation for a number of reasons, chief of which are the following:

1. I am at a loss as to how your “Elders and Senior APC Members’ List could have been crafted and consensually arrived at with the glaring omission of the names of (particularly) our former Chairman and Leader Former President Ernest Bai Koroma.

2. Could all of us having been so listed not be further challenged in a Court of Law for again violating the “anti-selections” caveats of the extant 2022 APC Constitution?

3. Wasn’t it disingenuous for you as the PPRC Chair to have nominated representatives to such a sensitive meeting panel as it carries the implicit risks of either having nominated wrong choices from an ill-informed APC Party perspective, or that your choices may seem in fact skewed in favour of a particular potential flag bearer, thus amplifying the very issues you are trying to resolve?

4. What sense does it make Mr. Chair to invite APC “Elders and Senior Members” to discuss unsavoury developments within the Party arising out of uncomplimentary conduct, mis-interpretations and/or misgivings about the ITGC that are impairing the “health and well-being” of the general membership of the APC, when you know full well that and quoting you: “The ITGC is not a regular organ of the APC Party, but a creation of the Court and over which you have little or no authority?

5. Wouldn’t it have been appropriate for you to have first cleared all “jurisdictional smokescreens” with the Hon. Mr. Justice Adrian Fischer to ascertain your own precise intervention remits and/or limitations before attempting to resolve a matter that you have already conceded you have little or no authority over? And incidentally why wasn’t the Judiciary that ipso-facto created the ITGC and are also dealing with other extenuating issues relevant to that creation not invited to be in attendance?

6. By this proposed meeting of 14th is the APC not being constrained into making appearances between two government bodies (the Courts and the PPRC) on virtually the same issues?

7. And even assuming the Hon. Justice Adrian Fischer has been unreasonably tardy with delivering his “Rulings” on the on the Peter Conteh “contempt” matter forming the crux of the current impasse within the ITGC, shouldn’t you both as the PPRC head and someone as resourceful and knowledgeable in the law and in the equivalent of a High Court Judge – in addition to also being an “Amicus Curiea” have independently decided and directed the respective factions within the ITGC on their grounds of grievances to accelerate harmony within the APC (and the country) pending a determination of the matter of contempt by the Honourable Judge?

8. And pursuant to (4) and (5) above, what is stopping yourself as the PPRC Chair to request the Attorney General to enter a “Nolle Prosequi” and have the matter relegated to your absolute purview and for its regular and expeditious arbitration? After as you very well know up to the Hon. Justice Adrian Fischer so adjudging, it was unprecedented in law and fact for a Honourable Judge to single-handedly dismantle the entire executive and administrative structure of a main opposition political institution and to replace it/them with selected team of administrators hand-picked on his sole recommendations.

11. Have things so degenerated within the APC Party membership even at their Elders and Senior Members’ convergence for supposedly peaceful deliberations within your office premises as to threaten national peace and stability to warrant the attendance of the Office of National Security (ONS), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), NSCORD, CEC and the Inspector General of Police?
12. Also if the Office of National Security (ONA), MIA MIA Police IG, NSCORD CEC are not bona-fide members of the APC Party that is deemed to be having Internal squabbles, why is it necessary for them to be in attendance in what is supposed to be a peaceful, trouble-free dispute resolutions processes why has the PPRC invited them to be in attendance? Could this not be an entrapment by the government to identify, incriminate and repress the effective support base of the APC, thereby substantiating your recent public statement inferring that the APC Party is prone to “inviting poor, vulnerable  youths to the streets to wreak havoc in this country” each time the Party is unable to reform itself?
13. If the interventions of the PPRC were sincere, why in that same continuing genuine and untiring efforts to bolster peace within the APC Party, did they not initially host a purely APC Family Meeting during which perhaps we would “wash our dirty linens in the privacy of a typical APC Family” manner, instead of you literally “taking our Party to the Cleaners” comprising evidently pro-government/opposition resources to wit: Office of National Security (ONS), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), NSCORD, CEC and the Inspector General of Police?

All APC caucus meetings I have attended in my entire life have been called by a Party Organ – not a government agency. I am therefore concerned this your social media invitation to a meeting on 14th could well be a “Pontius Pilate” approach by your agency (PPRC) geared towards micro-managing the entire APC Party away from a peaceful, free, fair, transparent, credible and inclusive multi-tiered 2023 electoral processes, and to sow further confusion within our Party ranks that will extensively delay our preparedness as a Party for the polls and ultimately guarantee a continuation of the present SLPP dispensation.

I honestly do not see myself aiding and abetting that enterprise in any way and accordingly unless I receive timely and satisfactory clarifications to all my foregoing concerns your invitation to a meeting on Monday 14th is hereby declined via the same way your invitation was extended to me for expediency: “Social Media”.

Sincerely,

Winstanley. R. Bankole. Johnson