By: Win Stanley R. Bankole Johnson
Politics is certainly not for the fainthearted. It requires grit, guts, brains and brawn all combined underpinned by most of all, by a discerning spirit. The latter is necessary to safeguard against falsehood, character assassination and deceptions all veiled as objective reporting.
When American Ambassador Brian Hunt hinted that his government is now working with the government of Sierra Leone, camp SLPP went agog and misconstrued it as an official recognition by the United States government of the second term Bio administration emerging from the skewed and still hotly contested results of the June Presidential elections. That would be grave error and I am sure the inference of the Ambassador there is that as a country, we should not remain in a vacuum or stalemate and that governance must go on. The only evidence of goofing by the Ambassador was when he stated that President Bio has been “inaugurated” which was either a blatant lie or a figment of his own imaginations. But even if the US Ambassador finds himself being misquoted he could only have himself to blame for jumping in between Radio or TV shows and behaving as if he is the new de-facto SLPP Minister of Internal Affairs.
I can understand foreign emissaries experiencing running stomachs. But a running mouth is as unacceptable as it is undiplomatic, especially in these our challenging days of politics.
Baskets
But what perhaps the SLPP are deliberately pretending to forget was that it was this same Brian Hunt who whilst discussing the remit of the Tripartite Committee some months back linked the expected outcomes of that Committee as belonging to two baskets: One basket for Electoral Reforms and the other for Electoral Justice.
As far as I am concerned the compendium of documents handed to President Bio at State House recently by both Dr. Samura Kamara and Dr. David Sengeh was only in respect of the first of the two basket to wit: Electoral Reforms. It yet remains submission of the reports on the second basket which is Electoral Justice to complement the “tripod” of the Tripartite Committee Reports from the International Community, as was represented in that Committee by Madam Sarah Wakanda, the Resident UND Representative in Sierra Leone. And we continue to await their own version of report with great expectations.
Whether Sara Wakanda is working independently or jointly with the Australian Judge is as unimportant to us as the real profession of the latter (that is to say whether she is a Judge, or Secretary or even an ordinary Cobbler). What is important to us is the third report from the Tripartite Committee to complete the “Tripod” input by the UN Representative. Simple!!
Divergence
Those who habour insinuations that the tripartite Committee has failed us should begin to have a rethink. Up to this moment the correct purposes for which it was set up are far from being achieved. This by extension means that a formal report on areas of divergence between the APC and SLPP, which ought to have been investigated/ addressed by the International Community representation on the Tripartite Committee and their appropriate recommendations made are yet to be produced. It is from that report that their decisions/recommendations should be anchored on:
– Who the real winner from the Presidential election conducted 24th June 2023 is – irrespective of whose Ox is gored.
– The names of individuals and government agencies that actively undermined democracy.That is before, during and after of the June 24th multi-tier elections leading to the Electoral Commission Sierra Leone announcing various skewed results that did not reflect the will of the majority of Sierra Leoneans. This report should also incorporate their recommendations for appropriate reprimands by the Residual Special Courts for Sierra Leone for all those deemed culpable.
– A firm way forward to restore democracy by recommending for early elections – say not later than Mid- 2025
Democracy
The importance of the report by the International Community on the Tripartite Committee should not be understated as without it, it will remain indelibly etched in our minds that going forward a disincentive has been created for the electorate not to bother to participate in future electoral processes. and that by their failure to produce their own independent version of the Tripartite committee Report. the United Nations System has acquiesced to the death of multi-party democracy in Sierra Leone.
What makes it obligatory on the UN/International Community of Observers to fast-track publication of their own report version is because we were in our ignorance about any wrongdoings until they prompted us that the elections results were marred by massive irregularities.
It was they (the ECOWAS, AU, US, UK, EU, Ireland, France, Germany, National Elections Watch and the Carter Center) that in fact prompted us to those massive irregularities.
Additionally they also asserted that the results announced by the ECSL reflected statistical inaccuracies and mathematical inconsistencies pointing also to the fact that overall the peoples’ democratic mandate had been brazenly stolen as those results among other things, did not reflect the will of the majority. That is why they (the International Community/UN) have to this day withheld extending their congratulatory sentiments to President Bio, further dampening SLPP spirits to organize his formal inauguration into a second term.
Accordingly in the absence of any tangible results or report evidences from those same International Observer Community/UN Representative that all the discrepancies previously highlighted about our June 2023 multi-tiered elections have been rectified, nothing now remains but for the Tripartite Report version by the International Community to recommend for fresh elections to be conducted by the ECOWAS presently in an effort to restore the democracy which they claimed had been stolen back to Sierra Leone. That should happen not later than mid-2025. There can be no two ways out, as the International Community/UN cannot afford to leave us in a lurch.
Elections
In essence, it will be difficult for this country to ever enjoy stability again if the International Community/UN continues to misconstrue our present volatile political climate as “peaceful” if those responsible for destroying democracy are let off with just a few slap on their wrists, especially as it is taking almost as long as the gestation period of female elephants for the ECSL to make public the results that informed their decision to have named Julius Maada Bio as winner of the June 2023 Presidential elections at first ballot.
What happened in this country last year to paraphrase President Ruto of Kenya: “………was a clearly orchestrated frontal attack by the SLPP on our democracy, the rule of law and the integrity of our constitutional institutions….”.
If to this day the ECSL (like the SLPP) continue in their obduracy not to produce the disaggregated results (in blatant violations of our extant electoral and constitutional rubrics by the former especially) then the UN Representative on the Tripartite Committee should do the right thing and either pronounce Dr. Samura Kamara as President on the evidence of genuine Results Reconciliations Forms produced by the APC, or recommend for the conduct of fresh elections under the supervision of the ECOWAS not later than mid-2025.
Justice
In the periods leading up to, during and even after the electioneering of June 2023, far too many people were extra-judicially “un-alived”, extra-judicially harassed, intimidated, “distrained” or displaced from their homes or had their homes destroyed, for the perpetrators not to be held to account. Thousands more were even physically prevented from exercising their constitutional political franchises on pain of physical injury or death. Our Lead opposition candidate was virtually at the whims and caprices of either the Anti-Corruption Commission or the Courts, his appearances were deliberately manipulated so as to prevent him from running effective political campaigns countrywide. And as Ambassador Brian Hunt himself knows too well, if a person did a crime, s/he must serve the time. As the adage goes: “there can be no Peace without Justice”. None of those guilty of undermining democracy must go unpunished. So there can be no inference for us to just move on, as if nothing happened.
We want to and must see the report version of the UN Representative to the Tripartite Committee to complete their own “Tripod” of the Tripartite Committee Recommendations pertaining to Resolution No.3 of the Bintumani Accords of 16th to 18th October 2023.
Grandiose
As supporters of the APC Party and Dr. Samura Kamara we have neither horses nor chariots, nor arms or ammunitions to fight our course but as principled politicians we rely greatly on the interpretations of, and adherence to the rule of law and the facts that have underpinned all evidence adduced so far, and nothing – absolutely nothing unto this day – will convince us that SLPP actually won the June 24th 2023 multi-tiered elections – Not even on pain of death.
My resounding commendation, applause and gratitude to the team that represented the APC Party on the Tripartite Committee for a job well done. These same sentiments resonated throughout Dr. Samura Kamara’s twenty-five odd minutes address to the nation on 5th July, which as usual it was “Spot-on”!!
To our detractors within and without the APC party indulging in a 2028 agenda, unless and until you see tangible evidences from the requisite “gazetted” parliamentary enactment assented to by President Bio subsuming public utterances of the SLPP Chairman Dr. Prince Harding never to hand over power in this country to mad people in the APC again, and which will guarantee transfer of political power from SLPP to APC in Year 2028, please discontinue your expectations of delusional grandiose.