Listening to Hon Robin Fallay last night, it was very insightful to hear the young man outline the reasons why he came to join the APC and also why he is at this time perplexed at the current leadership of the Party.
This morning came with the announcement of the Malawian Presidential elections in which the incumbent President was unseated. The jubilation on APC fora was mainly focused on the possibility that this could happen in Sierra Leone cine 2023.
I am laced with disappointment however for the fact that my comrades in the APC are refusing to learn from past experiences, avoiding to recognize the benchmarks of good political practice and failing to identify the red flags that warn of bad performance and failure.
I also look at the events of the past week when the Freetown Mayor came under fire and the APC Party never lifted a finger to come to her aid.
Where they thought that the Mayor may have iverayed her hand, the end of the week brought out a series of unforced errors by the government that showed them out to have been callous and irresponsible in the manner by which they attempted to brow beat the Mayor and thwart her plans for financial independence of the Freetown City Council.
Another incident that made for a week that was, came by way of a public spat in the NRM, the disagreement over strategy, the creation of a parallel executive of the purported group called the NRM-APC
In all of these events, the APC leadership is making a major mistake by underestimating the vigour of youth and the resilience of knowledge in beating the opposition
First of all, I believe that Hon Robin Fallay was right in his observation that th APC Chairman and Leader, together with his crop of executive members are unfit for the challenge presented by the contemporaneous political struggle of the party in opposition at this time.
Faced with a younger, more aggressive power hungry ex combatants and junta force, the APC in its present form would fold like a paper tiger – this is what happened in April 2018 and it will happen again in 2023.
The lessons to learn from the Malawian elections is that of unshakeable institutions, a steady court system and the lower of collaboration. Sierra Leone lacks all of that. We have a system where bribery is the order of the day and men would sell their wives for the equivalent of a trip to London.
We do not have a steady court system, the Judiciary is under swige. And the court system is the victim of “State capture,” and many would say that this started from the time the APC used the Courts to settle an internal rape of the Party’s and the country’s constitutions in one fell swoop when it illegally removed its elected Vice President on a whim.
A second learning point from the Malawian election victory by the opposition is because of the power of opposition collaboration. All political parties opposed to the sitting President came together. At present, the APC Parliamentarians could mot even push through a collaborative vote against Judges they allege to have been partial let alone put together a coalition of opposition against this government. Instead, there was ‘much ado about nothing,’ with many getting you to think that pushing for a failed vote in Parliament as was done this week by the APC leader of the opposition was an act of political skill.
APC party support for the Mayor is not only dismal, it is discouraging and disconcerting to say the least. To have avoided comment on the emerging stand off between the Mayor and center. Givwrnmwntwft a political void that remains as bare as a baby’s bottom. Does the Party forget so easily that it has always come to oower when a sitting mayor leads the offensive from opposition?
There are very. Any good reasons, some of. Which have been supported by the IMF and our international partners that the rates review for for Freetown was timely and just, yet the APC provided no support but deadly silence in the position.
Many now support the arguememt that the current executive are lazy or tired, unable to take advantage of a common position against the government, for them to have put pressure behind the central government to do what is best for Freetown.
The infighting in the NRM has turned nasty with accusations and counter accusations flying about but the optics remain unclear at best but at worst, some see the hand of the Chairman and Leader to manipulate events again to his advantage.
True or false, such accusations must be beneath a man who by now should be a statesman, shielded away from such divisive politics but his continued involvement at that level leaves much to be desired.
In the end, whilst I can submit that we may have a reasonable hance of unseafing this junta regime in 2023, this chance will elude us all if we fail to plan, starting from now.
The APC should start a proper engagement to go into an interim administration so that the internal organs of the party can be revitalised.
We should, on a secondary plane, begin the process of establishing a cross party coalition of opposition interests. We must at least bring on board the C4C to be voting with us in Parliament as from now, even if we cannot convince the NGC to back us.
After all this, we should look critically at settling the issues with the NRM so that we can bring the party out of court and into the negotiating table for peace
Unless we do these things, the struggles of the APC would never leave the crossroads that we now find ourselves.
Titus Boye-Thompson
*London 28.06.2020 18:53*
