By Titus Boye-Thompson, London
Once again, the issue surrounding the status of Alhaji Samuel Sam Sumana is making headlines on local and international social media because for some reason, the current Executive of the All People’s Congress are engaged on a season of perennial distraction away from the fractious issue of engaging a rogue government while in opposition.
Apart from the Executive’s abdication of duty, obscuring its responsibility to govern itself and build the party mechanism as a vehicle for the next government, they are satisfied with promulgating a narrative of marking each day with a new complaint over its own failures to manage the affairs of the Party. Their seeming reluctance to quell what is a very minute matter of Alhaji Sam Sumana’s status in the party is above all, unnecessary and divisive.
It is abhorrent for political leaders to continue maintaining a position that is wholly divisive and demeaning to the average intelligence as this one portends. One wonders what is it they are afraid of when all this effort is targeted at denying one man his rightful place in the party. So Sam Sumana is given a right as a full member of the party, eligible to stand for the highest office in the party without this absurd rancour – that to the uninitiated spells out democracy and the freedom of them people to choose who leads them. The rejection of this man’s eligibility within the party does not augur well for collective nationalism, the APC’s avowed ideological standing.
It is unclear whether the denial of Sam Sumana serves another purpose, such as to satisfy the egos of certain interested or otherwise vested interests in the Party hierarchy or better still, does a Sam Sumana candidacy for flag bearer reduce the chances of a full blown democracy within the Party? It is anticipated that the impending 2026 call for candidacy across the political spectrum within the governance arrangements for the APC going forwards and leading to the 2028 national elections would be addressed with all the tenets of “electoral justice” that the country is now aware of as being a necessary ingredient for transparent democracy in the affairs of public institutions. If this is the case, stopping a candidate at this stage of the hustings is tantamount to an attempt to rig the very elections that are intended to display the democratic values of the APC. Simply put, if the APC is intent of fixing the 2026 round of elections for choosing those who will engage in governance from Councillors to Parliamentary representatives and flag bearer levels, then the APC has no business seeking to gain power from the now flailing SLPP led administration. Let’s call a spade a spade, the denial or inclusion of Sam Sumana would become a litmus test for the democratic credentials of the APC and if found wanton, then unto all their houses because the party would be shut out of power again, come 2028.
There is an alarming alacrity with which those who are at the helm of the APC party consider the politics of victimisation and hijacking would better serve their interests. It is for that reason that officials are seen touting the mantras of separation, division and segregation within the governing ranks. In the recent weeks, several episodes of major social media handles have witnessed an array of APC Senior governance operatives such the Secretary General, and the National Publicity Secretary proclaiming and even the Leader of the Party in Parliament all making noises around the conflagration of the APC’s own internal Constitutional that is now questionably at variance to the national Constitution. Considering that the APC’s Constitution was enacted in 2022, there needs to be a serious re-think of the process and the interests that downplayed a really fruitful root and branch overhaul of the Party’s 1995 Constitution that was wholly out of tune to contemporary political party administration and governance. In the event, a major chance was wasted in the rush to feed certain “dogs of war” when the real battle had always been about ensuring that a robust strategy supports internal political frameworks and governance structures.
To put an end to this squabble is easy, let everyone who wants to lead the APC come forward and let the Party administration come up with a genuinely democratic method of narrowing the field to two or three major contenders from whom one shall be elected as Flag Bearer come 2026. There is still time to correct this and the Party must not be so heard headed to think that people would hesitate from taking it to court again to get what they want. This is a time for seriousness otherwise we will all perish in the hands of a rogue regime for another 10 years!
