By Sallieu S. Kanu
The former Attorney General and Minister of Justice has supported calls from some sections of the society for the All People’s Congress (APC) party to seek legal redress challenging the outcome of the June 24 President Election.
European election observers in Sierra Leone said there were “statistical inconsistencies” in the presidential results published by the electoral commission, which declared President Julius Maada Bio the winner of Saturday’s vote.
Bio was re-elected to a second term with 56% of the vote, narrowly avoiding a run-off against main rival Samura Kamara, who had about 41%, according to the official tally. Kamara has rejected the outcome, saying the results were not credible.
The main opposition APC party has seven days to challenge the result since the winner was announced on Wednesday. But the failure of ECSL to publish detailed results at the polling station level to allow for cross-verification in accordance with international best practice, made it difficult for the APC to challenge the result in court, according to political observers.
Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara, who is highly experienced lawyer and a members of APC party, posted on his Twitter account that “As lawyers we owe an ethical duty to represent the best interests of the Client. Elections are challenged by petitioning the results before the Courts. Any decision by the APC to abandon legal redress is regrettable. Implicitly, the APC have acquiesced and accepted the outcome.”
But most members of the APC executive including many of their lawyers disagree with Kamara, expressing lack of faith in the country’s judiciary.
One senior members of the APC who spoke on anonymity put forward cogent reasons the APC should not resort to the courts:
“A senior friend mentioned to me why he thinks that the APC should go to court after reading an initial piece on the subject THE 2023 RIGGED ELECTIONS: SHOULD THE APC GO TO COURT OR NOT? My friend said, ‘To file is to primarily complain against the outcome of the elections. If you don’t, it is a form of acquiescence’.”
He said, “With all honesty, I do not subscribe to my friend’s view on this and my arguments against this view is equally legal. To start with, it is a Judicial Notice that General Rules have exception(s). And silence doesn’t necessarily mean consent; and therefore when (or if) the APC does not go to make complaints or petition on the ECSL results in the courts, that doesn’t mean that the APC has in anyway acquiesced to the ECSL-Konneh’s results/announcement,” he said.
“The APC has good reasons for not going to the courts on these elections. And besides there are other ways, bodies, institutions etc. to make complaints to besides the courts. Notwithstanding all these options, the leadership of the APC has publicly made its position known that the Party does not accept nor recognizes the results announced by ECSL.”
The lawyer said that filing to the court simply means that the APC is subjecting itself to the jurisdiction of the Court, therefore, it’ll be bound by the decision of the Court. He added that once the matter is filed and heard in court, protocol automatically makes it ‘subjudice’ for the public to discuss and make statements or suggestions on the matter that is before the Court.
“My stance is APC should not go to court this time. APC should explore the many political options available to its disposal. And one good and positive step in the right direction is the position that the APC leadership took in denouncing the ECSL results announcement and that the APC does not accept it,” he said.
“It pleases me to state that the position statement made by the APC leadership resonated with resounding approval of the APC membership in the gallop poll I conducted within the APC membership.”