By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
The ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) appears to have set the stage for rigging the 2028 General Elections for it seems to have personnel-ed the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) with persons perceived to be its own “people”. The Political Parties Regulation Commission (PPRC) looks as if it is an SLPP attachment as it seems to have been peopled with suspected SLPP sympathizers. And the SLPP diarrhea-mouthed National Chairman, Batilo Songa, recently made a Freudian slip at their Wallace-Johnson Street headquarters, in Freetown, in which he insinuated that the SLPP government had all the state security apparatuses at its beck and call!
And we all know what happened in 2023 after ECSL, in concert with a well-known SLPP-leaning Civil Society Organisation that professes to be advocating for “governance reforms”, allegedly sexed-up voting figures which some international election observers said were as shady as shadiness could be shady. And when supporters of the All People’s Congress (APC) protested and took refuge in their party’s Brookfields national headquarters in Freetown; the state security apparatuses went into an unprovoked action—they didn’t shoot on sight. Instead, they did better; they shot out of sight—firing live ammunition into the APC headquarters as if the building was the practising firing range at the Benguma Military Training Barracks!
So if the APC wants to have a fair playing field in the 2028 General Elections; it must listen to two pieces of advice given by the American philosopher, Noam Chomsky, who advised that, “One of the clearest lessons of history: rights are not granted; they are taken by force.” And that, “No one will place the truth in your mind; it is something you must discover for yourself.” I will always agree to agree with those two pieces of advice agreeably!
Those two Chomsky-ian pieces of advice will be the premises on which today’s One Dropian dropping will be premised. With the current compositions of the ECSL, the PPRC, and the hierarchies of the state security apparatuses; there is no way the APC will have a fairer electoral deal unless its stalwarts take some uncompromising actions in the well of parliament and in the hall of their national headquarters! As things now stand in the country, coupled with some of the unscripted utterances of President Julius Maada Bio and First Lady Fatima Bio, the rights to free and fair General Elections in 2028 might not be granted to the APC unless the APC uses constitutional means to grab them in a restrained Chomsky-ian manner!
Recent happenings in Sierra Leone have shown that the PPRC appears to believe that what is good for the SLPP government must not be good for the APC. So, it doesn’t surprise me each time the PPRC shifts the goalpost whenever some SLPP higher-ups contravene the Political Parties Act No. 25 of 2022 but will act swiftly whenever a member of the APC appears to have contravened that same Act. I’m only surprised when non-SLPPers are surprised at most of the PPRC’s surprised surprises flung at them with insulting partiality!
And such insulting partiality is not lost on the current leadership of the APC which, in their 18 November 2025 letter to the PPRC Executive Secretary, noted that, “The APC is compelled to express its concern that similar or more alarming public statements made by prominent members of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), including statements capable of undermining national security, public safety, and national cohesion, have not elicit the same level of urgency or sanction from the PPRC….” In disrobed language, what the APC leadership is openly telling the PPRC is that that institution, which is expected to be an epitome of impartiality and independence, has dumped such tenets in one of the dumpsites at the SLPP’s Wallace-Johnson Street headquarters.
I concur with the APC leadership on the above point. It is public knowledge that some SLPP operatives, or higher-ups, like Austin Johnny, Dr Prince Harding, Kadiru Kaikai, and even Moses Mambu have said things, on national television and radio, which appear to have had apocalyptic or genocidal undertones. But they went scot free simply because they are SLPP members and the PPRC appears to have turned the other way and forgot about the “transgression of the law”!
But as Maxi Priest, the British reggae singer of Jamaican linage, notes in “Some Guys Have All The Luck” song; some people are luckier than others simply because they are luckily lucky with luckiness. But Lahai Marah, the APC Falaba District Chairman, is not as lucky as Austin Johnny, Dr Prince Harding, Kadiru Kaikai, and Moses Mambu as his own perceived faux pas falls under the PPRC’s “transgression of the law” and for which the APC has been given a hefty fine. The message the PPRC appears to be sending to the APC is that what is good for mother cow will always give the heifer a running stomach! That’s the truthful truth which all APC faithful should always get at the front of their minds (They might forget it if they get it at the back of their minds!). And they should know that to sail through the 2028 General Elections, they must find uncompromising constitutional ways of tackling the ECSL, the PPRC, and the state security apparatuses.
And now comes my second premise on which today’s One Dropian dropping is also premised: Chomsky’s advice that “No one will place the truth in your mind; it is something you must discover for yourself.” Despite their honey-coated words to give the international community the impression that they are believers in national cohesion; the thought processes of the SLPP higher-ups appear to show their disdainfulness for APC stalwarts and supporters. No wonder that President Bio insinuates that APC supporters are “terrorists” (For ease of reference please read his Speech of 8 May 2020.). For Fatima Bio; they are not true Sierra Leoneans. For Dr Prince Harding; APC stalwarts are “mad people” who should be denied political power. And for Austin Johnny; when you have a group of citizens who are “terrorists” and at the same time “mad”, coupled with the fallacy that they are not true Sierra Leoneans, advocating for a seemingly Adolf Hitler style pogrom might resonate with his ilk!
So, I will advise all APC-ians to always keep in mind the two pieces of advice given by Noam Chomsky that, “One of the clearest lessons of history: rights are not granted; they are taken by force.” And that, “No one will place the truth in your mind; it is something you must discover for yourself.”
medsankoh@yahoo.com/+232-76-611-986