By: Winstanley. R Bankole Johnson
Changes in our polity over the last few days confirms the adage that indeed a week in politics is a long time. Within that same span we have witnessed sheer belligerence derived from an arrogance of incumbency and the comforts of power being subsumed by overtures for peace and reconciliation. Such overtures however do not appear to be underpinned by genuine regrets for remission of indelible wrongs wrought with total disregard for redress or justice, but with the same disposition that is responsible for our retrogression as a nation more than sixty years after our attaining independence.
As usual we would grumble and condemn wrongs only when holding the sharper end of the political knife, otherwise foul is fair and vice versa.
Shifty
In our present quagmire there is nothing wrong in the messages for peace and reconciliations. It is just that the purveyors or messengers of such messages are notoriously tainted and shifty characters, whose words have never been their bonds.
In that regard whoever advised Brig. (Rtd.) Julius Maada Bio on utilizing the services of Alpha Khan, the same man who:
– Ruined Dr. Samura Kamara’s chances at the 2018 Presidential elections
-Cannot successfully suture the irretrievably broken-down relationship between himself his childhood bosom friend Ernest Bai Koroma since 2018 for such a colossal national duty call, must have been of disservice to this country.
Anyone with a propensity to be swinging between the proverbial pillars to posts (politically to save his interests) cannot be relied upon for sincerity and consistency, speak less of championing a national truce.
If there was any genuineness in Alpha Kanu’s mediation stance to warrant the involvement of the Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop, I believe that should have come much earlier than 24th June and on which basis Archbishop Tamba Charles could have sufficiently guided both Alpha Kanu and the Electoral Commissioner as Chief Elections Returning Officer Mohamed Konneh along Matthew 22:21 paraphrased, and to have read out the correct Presidential results as is demanded for by the International Observers, NEW and the APC Party.
Transparency
Matter of “factly” and from the perspectives of the opposition APC Party and the wider sector of the International Community, the issues at hand have nothing to do with the Brig. (Rtd.) Bio and Dr. Samura Kamara on inter-personal levels. Whoever said personal feuds ever existed between them in the first place? Nor do they have anything to do with the extent to which international sanctions against a Bio regime might impact the comfortable lifestyles of government functionaries and their assets or worsen that of the ordinary citizenry. Rather the issues at hand are national, and relating to the alleged capture of democracy and a denial of more than half of the voting age population of this country their inalienable right to have selected those who should govern them through a tabulation and publication of discredited results by the ECSL.
It also borders on the need for transparency because we cannot continue to be condoning such blatant wrongs as they persist. And that is why the International Observers (comprising the UN, US, UK, Germany, Ireland, commonwealth, Carter Center, AU and ECOWAS) and the National Elections Watch (NEW) and the APC party are insisting that the ECSL produces the correct disaggregated voters’ tabulation analysis polling station by polling station countrywide for public scrutiny. A failure to so comply insinuates a wider conspiracy to hide something sinister against the popular wishes of the electorate.
Traumatized
The issues at hand also have to do with the wanton deprivation and destruction of lives and properties particularly of opposition supporters in the South-East in the period leading up to 24th June. With orders from sublime quarters, APC members and supporters in particular were openly threatened to refuse to voluntarily vacate the South-East at their peril, which could include death by immolation and arson over their properties if they were ever identified as such. Not a word of caution or reprimand or gesture of reconciliations came from either Alpha Kanu or the Security Sector.
How does a society that is constantly talking about peace and reconciliations but without enforcement of justice plan to move on without righting such electoral wrongs?
It is even heartless for anyone to be contemplating peace overtures without first attempting to assuage – nay pacify – those who bore the brunt of such sufferings before and after the elections and are still traumatized.
So even at the worst of considerations, resolutions of issues of such magnitude demands priority government attention, the kind that transcends the usual “Court Barry Mentality” and/or local intermediation efforts either given the pervasively divisive kind of politics we have perfected in the last five years, or as Alpha Khan is attempting to hoodwink President Bio into believing he has the capacity to leverage from.
Anything short of that and we might as well begin to think about dispensing with all pretentious paraphernalia of law and order and justice as practiced in this country going forward.
We cannot be priding ourselves in human capital development and quality education and at the same time be condoning brazen electoral malpractices that leave in their wake trails of devastation that cannot be redressed within the compasses of law and order.
Incidentally the public appeal by the Civil Societies for inclusion into mainstream government going forward, instead of them remaining on their turfs as “Watchdogs of Society” to be addressing such aberrations as the “Voice of the voiceless”, is a clear indication of dashing hopes, and of a subtle acceptance of creeping decadence subsuming morality as the country degenerates into an arena of a “dog eat dog” or “survival of the fittest” world.
Skewed
Turning to another strand of the issues at hand, those who initially derided the APC Party’s decision to recuse their elected functionaries from participating at any governance level should by now be having a re-think. Without that Mohamed Gento Kamara would unequivocally and brazenly have also been announced as winner of the Freetown City Council Mayoral election. His spouse had convincingly hinted on that a few days earlier on social media, and by Gentos’ frenzied celebrations at the Lodge following Mohamed Konneh’s rancid declaration of the presidential elections results, the writing was already on the wall. It was the incessant flurry of condemnation of International Observers (EU, USA, UK, NEW, AU, ECOWAS, Germany, Ireland etc.) that the tabulation, transmission and collation of elections results and announcements of the first and second tranches of results were below board, coupled with the APC Party’s timely letter of dissent and condemnation of those results as skewed by our Leader Dr. Samura Kamara that put paid to it all. Both developments also significantly but divinely checkmated what could have continued as vengeful attacks and or retaliation between political rivals either celebrating victory or commiserating their loss for days throughout the country. And I thank God for that.
Like the International Observers, the APC are insistent that the final results as announced by the ECSL reflected statistical inconsistencies and glaring variances and or omissions that lack transparency and overall integrity. So as time progresses and commentaries by the International Observers become more caustic, so too is the resolve of the APC Party not to participate in governance at any level as would lend recognition of SLPP as victors, given overwhelming primary concerns for suspicions around those final hair-raising results. For example, whereas the ECSL promptly allocated four (4) Parliamentary seats to the SLPP for garnering twenty-four thousand votes (24,000) in the Port Loko District, no Parliamentary seat was allocated to the APC in Bo District where that party polled in excess of twenty-seven thousand (27,000) votes.
Indeed, as one international observer commented: “There is always a limit to which electoral frauds and roguery can be perpetrated”. This became evident when even after massaging the Mayoral results to reduce the 33.8% margin between Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr and Mohamed Gento Kamara to less than 10% just so as to save the face of the SLPP and create the false impression that they have made substantial gains within the Freetown municipality, the arithmetical sum still did not add up and Madam Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr still emerged victorious.
Missed
Whatever betide, unless all issues surrounding the transparency and credibility of the ECSL as they pertain to the conducts and results for the June 24th which is reading like they worked “from answer to Sum”, and as are being challenged by the International Observers, NEW and APC are promptly revisited and rectified, participation of the APC at any level of governance could portend evil omens for democracy within the sub-region and will make no sense. And that decision has the full backing of the entire Executives and APC rank and file.
I honestly see no reason why this decision should vex the SLPP because the same people advocating a non-participation are the very ones that were not allowed to canvass in the SLPP South-East stronghold areas. And if they did not want them around then why would they be missed in governance now?
In the perception of the international Observers, NEW and the APC Party those results that gave the SLPP 81 seats in Parliament as against 54 allocated to the APC would appear to have been extensively tampered with before release. Add to the SLPP number the 14 government kowtowing of Paramount Chiefs and the stage is thus set to kill democracy in Sierra Leone – not only through a total disregard for constitutionality and the rule of law like never before within Parliament, but of course also for consistent and undue harassments of the duly elected Mayoress Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, by a plethora of authority layers to be deliberately set up for the purpose of making her life more miserable than the fabled “Solomon Grundy” as under:
– Monday – Appearance at a Magistrate’s Court
– Tuesday – Anti-Corruption Commission
– Wednesday – The C.I.D
– Thursday – Minister of Local Government
– Friday – Ministry of Western Region (and woe betide this function is headed by an arch-enemy
– Saturday – Civic Funeral
– Sunday – Zion Methodist Church
And that (God Forbid!!) could possibly be the life of our Mayoress of Freetown throughout her second term.
