By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
Every time members of the All People’s Congress (APC) grumble about the actions or inactions of President Julius Maada Bio, they should know that they are the main cause of those actions or inactions due to their own repeated inactions!
If President Bio appears to be in disregard for basic democratic principles, it is due to the continuous timidity shown by the current APC executive. If he is constantly behaving as if he is a dictator or human rights violator, it is due to the repeated inertia of the current APC executive. And if things, generally, are the way they are in the country; it is mainly due to the fact that the current APC executive has repeatedly failed to provide the leadership which a main vibrant opposition party should provide in circumstances that demand decisive actions!
Prior to the 24 June 2023 general elections, President Bio repeatedly tested the waters and each time he got his Eureka moments! He organized what appeared to be a sham census with the aim of Gerrymandering; he got away with it. He imposed a Proportional Representation (PR) System with the aim of political poaching in the northern parts and Western Area of the country; he got away with it. He put in place an electoral commission which appeared (and still appears) to be pro-SLPP with the alleged aim of rigging the 24 June 2023 general elections; he got away with it. He created an uneven political playing field for the APC in the southern and eastern parts of the country with the aim of preventing it from campaigning in those areas; he got away with it. And when the realities were showing that he could not win the Presidential Election, let alone on the first ballot, because he seemed very unpopular; President Bio appeared to have stolen the elections with the alleged complicity of Mohamed Konneh, and he still got away with it!
Yet, with all of those getaways, above, members of the APC executive still behaved like sheep being led to the abattoir (which figuratively happened after Mohamed Konneh exhibited his mathematical creativity) without showing an iota of manliness. And whilst President Bio and his ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) symbolically got away with murder; the APC executive members were only screaming blue murder like frightened boys without any form of reaction!
As I said, earlier in this One Dropian dropping, President Bio has repeatedly been testing the waters and every time he is getting his Eureka moments simply because the current APC executive is afraid to fling his excesses back to his face. For something to happen; something should happen to provoke that something to happen even by happenchance. By now, the current APC executive should have learnt that President Bio could only be a Mr Nice Guy when forced to be, or do, so. If not, he will always be the man he has always been!
And what is painfully painful in its painfulness is the fact that the current APC executive wants political power but does not want to confront its challenges and realities. If one believes in a cause; one should be prepared to make sacrifices, suffer, and even die for it. But in the case of the current APC executive, they are unable to fling President Bio’s excesses back to his face simply because they are afraid to spend few nights in the cells at the CID headquarters or the Pademba Road Correctional Centre in Freetown. Methinks they are only there to enjoy the sounds of their titles than confronting President Bio and his SLPP—strategy for strategy and action for action!
Even on 8 May 2020 when President Bio, in a nationwide broadcast, accused the APC leadership of being silent “on the active participation of [its] members and executive members in…acts of terrorist violence, senseless loss of lives, injuries and wanton destruction of public and personal property”; the current APC executive did not force him to swallow back that label and offer an unequivocal apology. That’s why President Bio is still treating members of the APC like “terrorists” that must be crushed not negotiated with!
And knowing that the current APC executive can only scream blue murder like frightened boys each time he would have figuratively gotten away with murder; President Bio recently insinuated that whatever recommendations the Tripartite Committee comes up with, they would only be some sorts of an intellectual exercise as the next General Elections would be held in 2028. This has dashed the hopes of the ‘Tripartiters’ (Don’t dash for your dictionaries; this is another One Dropian dropped word!) who had originally hoped for a re-run of the 24 June 2023 general elections at worst or fresh elections at best!
And him now being a 2028 Agenda-ist; President Bio has even threatened “a bullet for bullet” would-be reaction to any would-be perceived political threats and dangers to Sierra Leone after the Tripartite Committee would have submitted its recommendations to him. It seems to me that the current executive of the APC must be prepared for that an eye-for-an-eye would-be apocalypse. After all, if the Paramount Chief tells his kith and kin that he intends to plow the fertile field over there; he should expect that the Village-ry (This is another One Dropian dropped word.) would be prepared for a bumper harvest!
In my One Dropian dropping of 31 October 2023, titled “Another APC Generation Must Rise”, I posited that: “I will never argue that the leadership of the APC in the last six years has failed in every sphere of political leadership. They did what they did under extreme difficult circumstances. They experimented with new ideas and strategies. But it appears that those ideas and strategies didn’t work for the APC simply because they were, and still are, very un-APCian in their methodologies! And besides, the current APC leadership doesn’t seem to have the political stamina to match-up the youthful crop of SLPP front-liners simply because either their hands are tied or they have been subjected to intricate blackmail by the Bio-led government….” So, it will be an act of extreme patriotism for the current leadership of the APC to give way to another one that will be able to confront President Bio and his SLPP—strategy for strategy and action for action!
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