By KABS KANU :
The All People’s Congress (APC ) have a magnificent knowledge of politics and this political know-how will make the party unconquerable for as long as they remain united. As we often say, nobody will ever defeat the APC. Only the APC will ever defeat the APC.
The APC’s rivals will never defeat them . If they ever suffer defeat, it will be an own goal. Their rivals will only defeat them when they allow them, when they become dangerously complacent, lethargic, and keep their eyes off the ball like President Joseph Momoh did. Their rivals will only defeat them when they fail to apply the clever politics and the satisfaction of the people’s welfare which have become the hallmark of the party and which are making other countries to now start creating their own APCs. Soon, every party in West Africa will be called APC.
President Joseph Momoh went to sleep. That was the only reason that the APC lost when they really did in 1992.
“In 1992, the APC captain Momoh dozed off, that was why Bio, Nyumah and others defeated us. If nar bin Pa Shaki, the NPRC would not have dared even approach State House”, says Issa Kamara at Whatsapp.
He is right. Before even the soldiers mobilized to come down to Freetown to demand their salaries, Pa . Shaki would have disarmed them–Not physically. He would have entreated, disarmed and neutralized them by giving them their demands. Say all you want about him. Shaki never played with the soldiers’ welfare. They got their salaries first, plus one free bag of rice every month. Of course, the young Ernest Bai Koroma would never have had frustrated soldiers fighting at the war zone.Never. He is too politically savvy and conscious of the welfare of the people to commit such an error.
POLITICAL SAVVY : PRESIDENT KOROMA AND SOME MEMBERS OF HIS UNGA DELEGATION CELEBRATE THE TOTAL DEFEAT OF THE “CONCERNED SIERRA LEONEANS” DURING THE 60TH SESSION OF THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY . THE SLPP DID ALL THE TALKING AND YAPPING BEFORE THE DEMONSTRATION WHILE THE APC TALKED LESS AND STRATEGIZED BETTER. AT THE END OF THE DAY, IT WAS THE APC WHO WHUPPED THE SLPP AND FORCED THEM TO FOLD CAMP BEFORE TIME
Ernest Koroma is the youngest elected President we have ever had but he is smarter than his opponents , more dynamic and more productive. He knows what his people want and strives to provide them . Witness the SLPP’s profligacy in not addressing the needs of the people even in their own strongholds : No electricity, no water, no good roads etc. This is not one of the APC’s tactics.
Put in Momoh’s position, President Koroma would have donned his military fatigues and gone to meet the soldiers at the battlefield. He would have served them burgers, akaras, water, plates of food himself. He would have paid them their salaries with his own hands. The soldiers would have embraced him. They would have tripped over each other to have photo ops for the media with President Koroma . The newspapers would have carried photos of him flying to the battlefield in a helicopter and hobnobbing with the soldiers and giving them their demands. That is what true APC Politics is made of , winning hearts, NOT SCORN . Momoh allowed the APC BATTLE BOOK to develop dust on the shelf. He forgot that the APC remain on top by addressing the welfare of our people and that the APC keep the forces so satisfied that when they return to power , you find even the very policemen and soldiers dancing on the streets in jubilation .
But even then, despite their overthrow by the NPRC, how long did the APC stay out of power ? Not long. The APC bounced back to power and have power because THEY understand politics better than the SLPP and the PMDC or what-have-you. When NPRC overthrew the APC , the party did not fight back. The party played opossum . The APC used Robert Green’s 22nd Law of Power . USE THE SURRENDER TACTIC ; TRANSFORM WEAKNESS INTO POWER. With Guinea’s President Lansana Conte offering to help an APC counter-attack, Momoh would have fought back, but the APC knew that it would have been at the expense of the people’s lives. If Sierra Leoneans had seen their people dying in droves , they would have given up their goodwill for the party because causing incalculable woe, misery, destruction of our nation and loss of lives are surefire ways of bungling the support of the people . By not fighting back, the APC gave the opponents time to showcase their power, mess it up and lose goodwill and respect, which the APC then capitalized on to get voted back to power by the people. This is one of the political tactics of the APC. “When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; Choose surrender itself…Surrender gives you time to recover ….By yielding , you in fact control the situation, because your surrender is part of a larger plan to lull them into believing they have defeated you….If you surrender instead, you have an opportunity to coil around your enemy and strike with your fangs from close up. ” (Robert Green or is he re-echoing Machiavelli ? ) . Seeming surrender gives you the opportunity to buy time, subtly undermine the enemy’s authority and wait when his power is weak, to arise, take him on and finish him off.
A good warrior chooses his fights very well. He does not fight every battle. He chooses when to fight and when not to. At times, instead of fighting, he tries to neutralize the opponent by winning him over. The APC chose not to fight Sam Metzger because his pen was too powerful . Instead of engaging Metzger in a long, costly and fruitless battle, the party realized that it could use Metzger’s ferocious pen to consolidate control in Sierra Leone. Sam Metzger thus moved from being the most bitter critic of the APC to one of its most vibrant propagandists ever , using his shrewd logical reasoning and journalistic savvy to take the APC through its most turbulent eras of the students’s revolt in 1977 and the workers’ strike in 1981 . The APC did not fight Jusu Sheriff, M.S. Mustapha, Dr. Joe Jackson, Michael Abdulai and other SLPP Alagbas of the 1970s/ 1980s. Rather, the party brought them in the fold and rather than fall to students’ and workers ‘ machinations , the APC lengthened its power for 15 more years. That is another tactic of the APC. They win over the opponents . They turn the other cheek and maintain control. The SLPP do the opposite and invite united strength from their rivals, who ultimately defeat them.
However, if the good warrior is provoked beyond human endurance and he chooses to fight, he fights to the bitter end until the enemy is slain and his head displayed as a trophy. He does not merely scorch the snake . It is dangerous. When the snake recovers, it will be hell for him . When the APC decides to fight, it defeats the enemy so completely and comprehensively that the enemy is rendered powerless and hopeless for long . That is strength and power in action. You turn weakness and seeming surrender to victory ultimately. You do not fight every battle, but the day you fight, you fight to win so convincingly that you paralyze the enemy forever. Those who ultimately take advantage of your graces and concessions and chose to fight you, therefore, do so at their own peril of total defeat.
These are just a few examples of the APC’s political mastery . There are many more which I will discuss later . Those who are therefore talking about “The 99 tactics of the APC ” should stop speaking as if the tactics are negative, assuming that they exist at all. . They should have asked the late S.I. Koroma to educate them about what these tactics were that he spoke of, according to APC antagonists. The APC have learnt how to fight and win through more clever, creative and legitimate ways and capitalizing on the self-inflicted weaknesses and impotence of the rival. If this is what some people call the 99 tactics of the APC, then the joke is on them. The APC is a political party that knows its stuff and will always remain on top because it understands politics better than its opponents. The opponents are only good at generating smoke and huffing and puffing. They only believe in brawn, bush-shaking and violence They do not understand politics and will thus always play second fiddle to the more clever APC. As the Liberian proverb goes, If your head is not smart, body go suffer “.
