The term of office of the All People’s Congress national executive expired last December 2023. Both presidential candidate, Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, his deputy, Hon Chernor Ramadan Maju Bah and the rest of the national executive are on borrowed time as per the APC 2022 Constitution. Their continual stay in office is illegitimate. They should have resigned from their respective offices since last December. They thus should give space and allow other competitors to try their chances in serving the party and the country. Had they won the last June 24, 2023 presidential race, they should have continued as president and vice, as well as leader and deputy leader of the APC. In the absence of that, due to poor planning, double standards, internal wrangling and the likes, new executive should have been elected into office since December 2023 to avoid the power vacuum within the party.
Sadly though, due to deliberate delaying tactics by operatives at the APC headquarters on 11A Old Railway Line, Brookfields in Freetown, the expired executive seems unaware of the fact that their time is due and they should hands off from the affairs of the APC. They are somehow hiding under the makeshift canopy of the Tripartite Committee; roaming around with lies and treacheries to their handful of followers that they are still the leaders of the APC. And that should in case the outcome of the committee work favour the APC, Dr Samura Kamara will ultimately become the president of Sierra Leone. And the question of going to a delegates’ conference/convention be totally misplaced.
No amount of Tripartite Committee investigations into the ‘flawed’ June 24 2023 presidential elections can continue to cover up for defeated and failed APC leaders.
The ‘defeated’ former presidential candidate, Dr Samura Kamara, ex-running-mate in the June 24 2023 elections, Hon Chrenor Ramadan Maju Bah, the APC Chairman, Hon Alhaji Minkailu Mansaray, his deputy chair, Alhaji Ambassador Osman Foday Yansanneh and the rest of the expired APC executive should respectfully leave the stage now and allow other party loyalists to serve in the various capacities. Their term of office as APC leaders and chairmen expired in December 2023. A new team is required to be democratically elected into those offices at district, regional, constituency and zonal levels at a delegates’ convention. APC partisans are tired and fed up with the leadership failures and empty excuses from their terminated party national executive. Therefore, a timetable should have been drawn up by now to be preparing the hearts and minds of delegates ahead of the approaching conference.
And be it thoughtful delays or mere time management ploy under the guise of the ongoing Tripartite Committee elections probity to suit their comforts, a conference that will enfranchise delegates to elect a new APC executive is a must. Any delay of the approaching APC convention should be deemed as an anti-party act against the people of Sierra Leone. So, APC stakeholders should try as best as they can to take the party to another convention and elect fresh leaders, the same way they were elected at the APC regional headquarters in Makeni, Bombali district in 2023. That has been the spirit through which the executive of the party are always legitimized. That is the resilient and irresistible change Sierra Leoneans the world over are yearning for.
So there is certainly no way Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP)-PAOPA hegemonic political culture of forcefully imposing their party leaders on the people, which started from their Wallace Johnson Street headquarters to State House, can be hardly replicated in the APC. If that happened in the SLPP by mistake under the hegemony of Julius Maada Bio then, and others, does not mean it must be copied into the APC party. There is no room for recycling failed leaders in the APC. That is impossible. Elections at all levels must be held soonest to know who takes the APC party to the 2028 presidential race! So don’t recycle failed presidential candidates and his running-mate, chairman and his deputy at all. They are all illegally serving on borrowed time. Tell them to allow true accessible democracy to reign in the APC party so that you can as well be democratic even when once you are in governance, because you started it at home and didn’t just dash it into for it being democracy. Practicing true internal democracy now can go a long way is shaping the national democratic process if not only the APC.
And by the look of things, until the party is taken to a convention, by the APC National Advisory Committee (NAC), delay manoeuvres by failed APC old guards – Hon Alhaji Minkailu Mansaray, Dr Samura Kamara, Alhaji Ambassador Osman Foday Yansanneh and Co will continue with their pranks unchecked at the detriment of the APC and democracy. For they will endure to explore all avenues aimed at prolonging their illegal holds on power in the APC party, while waiting for the outcome of the Tripartite Committee.
The mandates, roles and responsibilities of the APC national executive are far different from that of the Tripartite Committee. Why should the APC be held up to wait for the outcome of the committee, before it can go to convention to elect new leaders? The borrowed time leadership knows fully well that though none of them APC and SLPP pulled the 55% threshold? Such delays to take the party to convention are uncalled for. APC party members and supporters are however expected to rise to the occasion, take their party to a constructive national delegates’ conference and elect new leaders with what it required to take the party to State House come 2028.
Tripartite Committee canopies must and should thus be demolished entirely to expose those hiding under it to prolong their incompetent hold of power in the APC.
Again, there is no room for the recycling of defeated and expired executive led by the 2023 presidential candidate, Dr Samura Kamara, Hon Chrenor Ramadan Maju Bah, Hon Alhaji Minkailu Mansaray, and Co. The time is now for radical reforms of the APC. It is no secret that the executive that ran the affairs of the APC from 2017 to date has not done any good for the progress and development of the party and the country as whole.
