APC PARTY TO FACE THE TRUTH OR PERISH
Titus Boye-Thompson, Accra Ghana
When the history of politics in Sierra Leone comes to be written, the All Peoples Congress political party could well be consigned to a footnote in the first half of this century, all because those who are at the helm of the party have chosen demagoguery over the well established objective of constructive nationalism that has been the uniting glue that held the multifaceted tribal and regional units that had to be combined together as a force to fight off the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), a mainly one tribe dominated conclave.
It is also sad that the politics of Sierra Leone must still be viewed as a battle for tribal supremacy instead of a combat of acumen, wit and a pejorative for development aspirations. It is a shame that the arguments between the parties have always tended to be misconstrued but where the APC has suffered a major failure in approach has been their avoidance of what is in some respects the truth of the matter. The 2018 and 2023 elections have both been clouded with mystery but the latter is more maligned because it has been proven to be a major fraud on the electorate that could only be executed with the connivance of a willing opposition party heirarchy that sat by and watched the whole election being stolen from right under their eyes.
“Only a bad workman would blame his tools,” the saying goes. The APC heirarchy have in principle, sought to accuse its own flag bearer Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara for being responsible in losing the 2023 elections while in their own silos, they have attempted to distance themselves from the responsibility to undertake the one most important objective of a political party. They failed to exert authority on the conduct of the 2023 elections and to ensure that the Party gains power by lawful means. This unaligned failure has now resulted in the quagmire that the Party now faces – the APC flag bearer is currently in conflict with the vested positions of the Party executives even though their position in turn is against the Party’s avowed declaration that the results of the 2023 elections as announced are unacceptable and that they require the Electoral Commissioner to prove his case by publishing the authenticated RF forms as proof of every vote cast and counted. The sad case is that the Executive and the Flagbearer are just not singing from the same hymn sheet.
It has been said that the hallmark of failure for a political leader is for him to hand over power to his opponent. There are too many aspects of this dictum that authenticate its dexterity in Sierra Leone. On the one hand, it has to reflect a failure in leadership for a leader to lose power in ite entirety. If the leader was successful as they would have us believe, then there is no reason for the people to vote him and his political party out of power. So the first truth that the APC must face is that its manner. So when supporters of the APC fail to recognize this fact but talk about a legacy of the former President, one is confused as to which legacy should take centre stage when his most proniounced failure is to have failed to ensure that his successor wins an election that he himself superintenbded and had full authority over. It is also worse when those who are in a position to know accept that those elections were indeed tainted with fraud and that then alleged winner was announced prematurely. So when the APC is looking for its truths, it has to deal with the fact that the Ernest Koroma Presidency ended as a failure.
The current distension between the Party executive and the general rank and file is another cause for concern. While the supporters accept that the party has a structure, it is the absolute disregard and refusal to enforce the structural checks and balances that confuse everybody. While many now understand the rationale behind the fight that the erstwhile flag bearer has embarked on and hence accept it as a project worthy of support, the party heirarchy is adamant that it wants nothing more to do with the conduct of the 2023 elections. This position is not only sending out mixed signals but it is in fact a direct contradiction of the Party’s refusal top accept the results as genuine up till this point. There is a widespread belief that the Party executives are being deemed as hypocrites and undemocratic even in their own beliefs. In consequence, come 2026, many now suspect that there will be such a wholesale fraud in the process leading up to the APC’s internal flag bearer elections that would make the theft of the 2023 national elections seem like child’s play! Already, we have a plethora of aspirants, many of whom are unprepared for the battle of a national election, some yet to be tested and most have not held any high level responsibility within the party for sufficient time, enough for them to aspire to its leadership.
What is even more daunting to the observer is that up till now, neither the Party Secretariat nor its Elections Management Committee are yet to publish any guidelines or preparatory framework for the elimination of preliminary candidates or the conduct of the various levels of elections. What many are talking about is the very huge fees that would accrue to the party and the sweeteners that may go to the Party heirarchy as largesse from thge senior contenders so that they may be favoured by the heirarchy at somepoint. What all this boils down to is a creeping and inate corruption within the body politic of the APC notwithstanding that this accusation has always been levied against it. To say that the APC has not seen the need to fight wholeheartedly for electoraljustice means that deep within, the leaders of this party are not committed to opeaceful and lawful takeover of power, that in itself is a very close call to the allegations that the Party is behaving like a terrorist organization as levied against them by the sitting President.
With the imminent grip on power, the ongoing tussle within the SLPP and their battle readiness for the forthcoming elections, the APC cannot go on with the idea that it is entitled to win in 2028, nor should anyone presume that the SLPP would give them a chance of making any significant headway without a fight, including leveraging of their now practiced arsenal of fraudulent conduct of the polls.
These are hard truths that the APC must address otherwise it faces sheer political extinction at the next elections. The dismembering of the Party by the current spate of flag bearer aspirants hinders any meaningful attempt at party unity. Mention that one or more of the aspirants are favoured by the very same ex President who left the Party in such disarray is not only laughable but in itself tends to augment the seeming disparagement of the confused masses who make up the bulk of the Party supporters. The grassroots of the party now see a host of political misfits, failed political careerists and rent seeking bandwagon chasers scurrying for alignment to a fleeting charade, as if the people would disregard those who have worked so hard to keep this party together all these years and go in to vote for someone who has spent his time working in the background against the unity of the APC. The unalloyed fact is that any movement that goes against a concerted fight for electoral justice cannot get anywhere because without the requisite assurances that the forthcoming elections will not be subject to the same existing frameworks, there will be a further theft of the votes and the Sierra Leonean people will again be fleeced.
THE WORD ON THE STREET IS THAT THE PEOPLE DEN TIRE, DE PEOPLE DEN GAINSE! The APC Party flag is not a lollipop that every child should feel entitled to have it!
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