By Kabs Kanu
There are certain offenses in tort and criminal law for which you have no legal defence. If you commit them, there are no mitigating or extenuating circumstances or legal excuses you can bring up to avoid being culpable or guilty. They are called STRICT LIABILITY OFFENCES.
If you throw dirt on the street, you are guilty. You cannot claim that you did not know it was an offence. You are liable. If you do not pay your taxes, there is no excuse in law . You cannot claim lack of knowledge, difficult times or that you forgot . Once you committed it, you are guilty.
If you knowingly and deliberately alter a document , change figures and knowingly enter the wrong figures in a computer or ledger to produce a different or illegal outcome as done by Mohamed Konneh, you have committed a crime for which there is no legal defence. You cannot claim ignorance to exonerate yourself . You cannot turn around and blame it on the negligent or reckless or criminal acts or petulant or careless utterances of others, the Police or the moral authorities that caught you. It is all on you. You committed the offence and you are liable or guilty.
This is to say that Konneh or any of his agents cannot find faults with the APC or the international elections observers or the international community for any offence to excuse the strict liability crime Mr. Konneh committed. The response of the law will be : “Yes, the APC , the elections observers and the international community did what is being alleged but the acts or omissions of these bodies provided no excuses for Konneh to knowingly alter documents or figures to bring about an unlawful outcome. “
Minus the elections observers, Konneh still committed the crime. This problem is bigger than America, UK, France, the EU, ECOWAS or the AU. It is not about these bodies. Irt is about our elections commissioner and his team. It is about our presidential elections. It is about the votes our people cast in the polling stations and recorded on RRF forms that got changed when being transmitted into the ECSL computers. It is about the falsification of the numbers of the elections votes. This is what is exercising the minds of Sierra Leoneans and the international world.
Sierra Leoneans want answers why their votes in the polling stations were not reflected in the final tally. That is our overriding concern now.
The only thing that Mr. Konneh can do now is to provide the data of the votes by polling stations that led him to declare President Bio the winner, as demanded by international moral guarantors , facilitators and stakeholders . He has a duty to provide this data. He cannot bank on any extenuating circumstances or fault of any kind by other parties to refuse to produce the data. If Konneh does not produce the data, it will add another layer to the crime he has already committed.
The international community have a moral right to demand transparency in the elections because they are moral guarantors of peace and stability. Their funding keeps the nation’s head above waters. If this present impasse leads to chaos, they will be thrust with the responsibility to use their pecuniary, logistical and humanitarian resources to help bring it to an end and also aid the country and its people to recover from the effects. They cannot therefore be accused of meddling in our national affairs. They facilitate or provide the monies that help us to run our country.
What has become most disgusting about the Sierra Leoneans of today is state or non-state actors using their positions or influence to prey on the naivety and gullibility of the public to twist matters . Whenever our nation is faced with crises, instead of helping to resolve it satisfactorily for the benefits of all the parties involved, some Sierra Leoneans resort to mind games to try to deflect blame or play down the gravity of the offence.
If somebody has committed a crime, he has committed a crime. There are no ifs and buts about it and other unrelated facts cannot be used to distract the public from the main issue, which is that the votes of the people were stolen by the Elections commissioner and his team .
Konneh had no right or excuse to tamper with our presidential results. He had no right to change figures on the RRF forms from the polling stations . He was appointed to deliver free, fair and credible elections . He is receiving pecuniary benefits —salary , allowances and material resources – provided by the state for the job he had been entrusted with. His duty is not to support any candidate as he has done in favour of President Maada Bio.
“APC also did it too when they were in power . APC did this. APC did that. APC said this “ Yes , all these things might be true, but that did not give Konneh any moral and legal right to alter the results of the presidential elections. That is not a defence for the crime committed. The fact that other road users and pedestrians are committing traffic offences does not preclude a police officer from pulling you over and giving you a ticket for over-speeding or other violations. The law is the law. The law has to be enforced . And if somebody commits an offence , he must face the music and penalty . That is the Rule of Law that makes our world safe, stable , progressive and smooth – functioning.
THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE STUDIED LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON’S EXTERNAL PROGRAM .
