A year and few days after the disputed presidential election of June 24, 2023 in Sierra Leone, the incumbent president that was declared the winner, albeit against opposition to the announced result by members of the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) and the international community, still occupies his seat in the office of the president while the challenger and presumed winner of the polls is still trying to assure his supporters that they will get to the bottom of the elections result to show that he won the elections.
Meanwhile, the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government despite opposition to the production of the announced election result by the chief electoral commissioner is also failing to speak the truth to their supporters on how they came to claim victory in an election whose rigging many people have said started years ago.
In essence members of the public say both parties, the APC and SLPP, are deceiving the nation.
On the side of the SLPP, concerned citizens say the party and the president are failing to speak the truth to their supporters and the nation that they didn’t win the presidential race. They have failed to tell their people that the presidential victory has been a calculated strategy that is premised on the capturing of all the election management bodies, which job was accomplished due to the compliance of a very quiet and inactive opposition.
A quiet opposition gave the incumbent party carte blanche to do as they please by first sacking nearly the entire staff at the Statistics Sierra Leone, which should have been a harbinger of things to come, before making a similar move and replacing the substantive heads of all elections management bodies with people belonging to the ruling party or belonging to its dominate tribal group.
A year after his electoral victory and despite the work on the way to prove or disprove his victory based on a review of the real or raw elections day voting data, the incumbent is now on record saying that the next scheduled presidential election is slated for 2028.
The public is concerned that by using the chief electoral commissioner to deny the public and the investigators of the Tripartite Committee access to the demanded data aimed at qualifying or disqualifying the president’s victory, the electoral commissioner of Sierra Leone remains the only bulwark against the electoral justice the opposition is hoping to achieve.
The ruling regime is failing to inform the nation that there are glaring irregularities and statistical inconsistencies in the announced presidential result that point to the inference that the party couldn’t have won the presidency. They are failing to inform their supporters that short of Konneh’s continued refusal to release the raw polling data, the regime has no legitimacy hence the reason for the rushed swearing in ceremony and its failure to hold an inauguration ceremony.
Hence the SLPP rules the country under the canopy and protection of the ECSL, whose head is protected by the judiciary and the office of the president, all against the wish and expectation of the voting public.
On the part of the main opposition APC, they are also deceiving the people of Sierra Leone and their supporters about the reality of the party’s situation and the prospect of accessing the raw voting data and reversing the president’s win after the data would have shown that he indeed lost the elections.
The APC is failing to inform its supporters that it cannot do anything to the Bio led regime without the help of the international community. The party and its leaders are failing to inform the people that relying on the chief electoral commissioner to produce the disaggregated voting data will only take the nation back to square one as the party will not face the judiciary who they have from experience know is biased and captured by the executive arm of the government. The APC has not seen the light of day on any case brought forward against the sitting government aimed at resolving political issues.
The assumption that Samura Kamara won the elections, an inference made from the commissioner’s continued refusal to publish the raw data, citing it has never been requested of the commission to produce such data before, and that his administration will not be the first, adding concerns for the security of the biometric data of the voting public not to fall into the wrong hands.
The APC leader is also misleading the country by failing to inform his supporters that the APC cannot enforce or make actionable any recommendation of the Tripartite Committee without going to court or actions backed by ECOMOG to prevent an Ivory Coast or Gambia situation.
The reality of the two parties to have ever ruled this country is that they both appear gullible to the general public, especially those informed about the reality of our present situation. They are both playing the role of the Squealer in the Animal Farm: although things are not okay they are both trying to present an image that all is well, which is far from the truth.
Outside the ECSL and the judiciary the APC cannot force or even make a claim on the SLPP regime aimed at Samura Kamara being declared the actual winner of the June 24, 2023 presidential race. This is the truth they are failing to tell the people.
With the regime backed by the army and the police the only way we can avoid these two elephants fighting, which fight will only affect we the grass, is by the presence of ECOMOG to prevent such an eventuality.
Therefore both parties have been lying to the nation that we have all along been sitting on the precipice of a recurring of the events of the 90s, and that we have been saved by the presence of the international standby force ready to make actionable and implementable the recommendations of the Tripartite Committee to avoid a Laurent Gbagbo or Yahyah Jammeh scenario in Sierra Leone.
