By KABS KANU
If the Julius Maada Bio we all know is allowed to get away with last June 24’s spectacular, bold-faced, breathtaking , predatory and rapacious elections rigging that destroyed democracy in Sierra Leone for all times, a very dangerous , ugly and portentous precedent will be set in the country that will come back to haunt the nation.
The very alarming statement U.S. Ambassador David Bryan Hunt keeps making that that there will be no elections rerun in Sierra Leone after the Tripartite electoral investigations have not only dampened the spirits and hopes of millions of Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad who want to see our nascent democracy restored but it has given Maada Bio an escape route and more leverage to continue acting with impunity in Sierra Leone.
I think , if everything being said about the Tripattite Committee and its terms of reference are true, the U.S ambassador’ s statements are presumptuous and preemptive. He alone cannot and must not decide whether there will be a rerun or whatever. He eben made a subjectivr statement expecting a rerun is unrealistic and unhelpful. That eas a personal opinion.
As an ambassador representing a foreign country in Sierra Leone, he should have displayed diplomatic neutrality. He should have simply bypassed the question on the rerun and told the 98.1 journalist that everybody must wait for the recommendations of the Tripartite Committee. Diplomats do not get into the habit of saying everything.
DID THEY JUST WASTE THEIR TIME AND THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER’S MONEY ?
The biggest concern in the nation now is that stakeholders must avoid setting a very bad precedent that will cause a repetition of political evils.
Does it not bother Ambassador Hunt that if Maada Bio is made to see out his illegal , illegitimate and felonious second term, without any action, he will repeat the same crimes he committed in the past years which enabled him to rig the 2023 elections ? Somewhere along the line, we should also expect another criminal with the same Maada Bio mindset to do the same, with the prospects that AMERICA and the international world would make noise but eventually get him off the hook and allow him to rule. Mr. Ambassador, you are dealing with Africans,not Americans. Accords can be reached and structures set up but Africa is not like America. In Africa, It is MIGHT IS RIGHT. And Bio is one of the progenitors of this philosophy as we have seen. Maada Bio does not respect agreements, conventions , the law or the constitution. He does what he wants. The only reason Bio is pretending to be cooperating with the Tripartite Committe now is that he wants to lay hands on the MCC $500 million Compact grant.
Another srrious matter nobody seems to be talking about is how the electoral system in Sierra Leone would be reformed in a way that will deter the perennial election robbers like the Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP } from stealing another election when the party have stacked the Elections Commission and all governance institutions including Parliament, the judiciary, civil society and even the Army and Police with their Southeastern tribesmen and women. Are these structures goung to be purged or allowed to remain as they are ?
The truth nobody is talking about is regardless of how many solid rigging -proof structures the Tripartite Committee recommends and how many legal avenues these structures create for accountability , as long as all the institutions mentioned above remain in the hands of Southeastrrners , the SLPP will always be able to rig elections. For the people’s votes to count , the institutions must be purged and detribalized. We cannot have a nation where all our institutions are run and controlled by one tribe or ethnic group. It is very dangerous, with Rwanda and Liberia in mind. America does not need to be reminded about that.
After Ambassador Hunt’s statement, many Sierra Leoneans are now reconciled that even before the Tripartite Committee submits its recommendations, the committee is dead on arrival , except the hopes entertained by supporters of the All People’s Congress ( APC ) come true or Sierra Leoneans resolve to take matters into their own hands as some are threatening.. So, what was the use of setting up the Tripartite Committee and creating such tremendous hype around it, when it will not hold anybody accountable for elections thieving , the fake elections results will stand and Bio”s illegal government will stay on ?
To a lot of people, based on what Ambassador Bryan Hunt continues saying, the Tripartite Committee was just a waste of public and the participants’ time and money down the drain. And this constitutes another cruel disappointment for the people of Sierra Leone.
Shame.
Leave a Reply