…The Slaughtering of APC Supporters
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
Rigging the 2023 elections was well preplanned by the Maada Bio-led Paopa conglomerate to cover up the wrath of the electorate for their woeful failures and stay in power inevitably. So, even as reports from all local and international election observer missions damned the end part of the election process as flawed and being manipulated for the gain of incumbent Bio and his Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), all was given a cold shoulder.
And even when Bio and his appointed officials at the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone were asked to publish the results of the election, at least, to prove the authenticity of their claimed victory in the midst of the opposition rejecting the results and boycotting governance, it also fell on deaf ears!
For incumbent Bio and his paopa followers, he was the winning horse of the presidential election as long as the legally established elections institution, Electoral Commission Sierra Leone (ECSL) had announced him the same.
The ECSL officials on their part argued that the election results were “classified,” and would not be published, citing official confidentiality mandated by the framework of the country’s electoral laws.
This open and bold disregard for local and international political actors’ concerns is viewed by many Sierra Leoneans as the act of cruelty to oneself that has haunted Bio’s second tenure, withering every nerve of the Paopa government to perform well! It not also only disrobes Bio’s government of every vestige of democratic credentials, but continues to dip his government in particular, and the country in general, in a load of deep shit and economic chaos. It even placed the country on a powderkeg, and only the invisible hands of divinity prevented it from detonating as the signs were evidently intermittent!
Before the results of those rigged elections were announced, security forces stormed the offices of the opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) party on Old Railway Line at Brookfields in Freetown, firing sporadically, thereby gunning down a diehard APC member, Matron Hawa Dumbuya.
Presidential candidate of the APC, Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara rejected the announced results. He dubs them manipulated and skewed, with a particular reference to the critical stages of the election process, including the counting and tallying.
It can be emphasized that all efforts by the International Community, including the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, among others, to get the Chief Electoral Commissioner and Returning Officer, Mohamed KenewuiKonneh, to publish the results of the elections at polling station level to prove their victory was defied with brazen impunity! Thus, the Maada Bio government carries the “illegitimate” nomenclature.
But though the government was threatened with economic and political sanctions, including travel bans against its operatives, and those individuals who might have undermined the country’s democratic process, it could not help the situation either.
The said sanctions and travel bans could not be said to have been fully instituted, but Sierra Leone has rapidly nosedived in every facet of development, as donor fatigue amid poor international relations are evident in real time, slipping the country into socioeconomic deficiencies!
Meanwhile, external funds could no longer be mobilized as usual to enable the government to bankroll its programmes and deliver effective basic services for the people, and mere economic hardship, deprivation and suffering have, therefore, become the order of the day in naturally endowed Sierra Leone.