Former Leader of the Coalition for Change (C4C) party in Parliament, Hon. Saa Emerson Lamina, has told The Nationalist newspaper in an exclusive interview that the main reason why he has switched his political allegiance to the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) is because majority of his constituents advised him to do.
Another reason why Hon. Saa Lamina says he went to the SLPP is because he believes that the Bio-led government “has righted some of the historical wrongs meted out against Kono District.”
When asked why he left the All People’s Congress (APC) and went to the C4C and now the SLPP; Hon. Lamina notes that the APC never restituted for the wrongs done to him and former Vice President Chief Sam Sumana. He states that at no time did the APC meet him and say: “Let bygones be bygones.”
As for the other C4C Members of Parliament who refused to make the switch with him to the SLPP but instead formed an alliance with the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), Hon. Lamina refers to them as “lightweights” who have not done anything worthwhile in their constituencies, saying that, “some of these MPs went to Parliament for their stomachs and pockets.”
Highlighting some of the achievements of the SLPP, which he says lured him to join the SLPP; Hon. Saa Emerson Lamina avers that “the SLPP has given Koidu City 24 hours’ electricity, built the Kono University, and is constructing the highway from Kono to neighbouring Liberia which will facilitate international trade.”
He has promised to deliver Kono to vote for President Maada Bio’s second term and to be at the vanguard of SLPP’s successive elections victories. He has also predicted that, “the SLPP will clinch eight seats in Kono District.”
Hon. Saa Emerson Lamina was one of the founding members of the C4C party and was the Leader of the party in the just dissolved fifth Parliament of the Second Republic, making him the youngest Opposition Leader in the history of the Parliament of Sierra Leone and one of the youngest ever Member of Parliament to represent Kono District. He was a Parliamentary-award winning Chairman of the Mines and Minerals Committee, and a Member of Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States- OACPS/ European Union-EU Parliament.