When the results of the 2018 Presidential election runoff were announced and the then opposition leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), Julius Maada Bio, was eventually sworn in as Head of State; a lot of critical-minded Sierra Leoneans were sceptical about whether he would be able to fulfill the lofty promises he made during the campaign.
With almost five years in office, it is now clear that President Bio’s “New Direction” manifesto was nothing but a hoax foisted on unsuspecting Sierra Leoneans. That political deception has now led Sierra Leone to an economic abyss in which the All People’s Congress (APC) appears to be the only political party that will yank the country out of that deep hole.
And it is no gainsaying that the APC’s popularity has not only increased among potential first time voters and the youth but also among those who were so foolhardy to have voted for either the National Grand Coalition (NGC) or the Coalition for Change (C4C). Despite the APC is, at present, undergoing some intra-party challenges; hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans still believe that the APC is a government in waiting.
The current economic hardships in the country, which is caused by the ineptitude of the Bio-led administration coupled with the SLPP government’s abysmal human rights record, are some of the things that will make majority of Sierra Leoneans kick out the SLPP in June this year through the ballot box. And the arrogance, the tribal bigotry, and the disregard for citizens’ dignities are some of the sins which the SLPP has committed against the very citizens who voted for them in 2018—and those sins are now far beyond atonement!
If the SLPP, with all its fake promises coupled with the Chief Samsumana, Dr Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella and Mohamed Kamarainba factors, was unable to win at the first ballot in 2018, how then would it have a landslide in June 2023 as the ‘Paopagandists’ are now postulating.
We, in The Nationalist, believe that the APC now has more chances of closing the thin margin of the 2018 Presidential election runoff results in which the then Mr Julius Maada Bio won by just 92,237 votes.
We also hold the standpoint that with the decline in the political fortunes of “spoilers” like Samsumana, Yumkella, and Kamarainba whose combine total votes cast of 11.5% during the first rounds were predominantly from APC strongholds; then it is clear that the APC will emerge as the victor in the June 2023 elections. You can take this to the bank as collateral!