Sources close to the National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the All People’s Congress (APC) have told The Nationalist that the next plan of action, which the party plans to take, is to instruct its supporters and sympathizers to be sitting-at-home once a week until its demands are met.
Some NAC members said they would propose every Wednesday and that they had already mooted the idea with Dr Samura Kamara, the APC 2023 Presidential Candidate and Leader, but that he seemed undecided to green-light it.
The APC is still unequivocally rejecting the announced results of the June 24 multi-tier elections, which brought President Julius Maada Bio to power again, given the glaring irregularities and violations of established electoral procedures.
Added to that, the party has also “declares its non-participation in any level of governance, including the legislature and local councils, as the results have already been tampered with to give the SLPP an unjust majority at all levels.”
The Nationalist is being informed that the party plans to take this weekly sit-at-home strike action considering new allegations which now are surfacing that the head of the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (EOM), Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, was allegedly bribed by the Bio-led administration for ECOWAS to give the June 24 elections a clean bill of health, which they did despite all the glaring irregularities and “statistical inaccuracies” in the final results announced by the Chief Returning Officer Mohamed Konneh.
The leadership of Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, who is being called “Mr Fixer”, is now so questionable that he was rejected by the Guineans when he was appointed as an envoy by ECOWAS to mediate a peaceful transition with the Guinean military junta headed by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya who categorically stated that Dr Chambas couldn’t be trusted as a credible mediator because of his complicity in the 2018 elections in Sierra Leone.
In its press statement of 28 June 2023, the Carter Center urged the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) “…to publish election results by polling station so that parties and observers can cross-verify data, in accordance with international best practice.” The Center added that, “Publishing detailed polling station results is critical to ensuring that the final results announced by the ECSL genuinely reflect the will of the people as expressed on election day. This is especially true given that The Carter Center and other observers have expressed strong concerns regarding the lack of transparency during the tabulation process and have directly observed instances of serious irregularities at tabulation centers that call the integrity of the results into question”.
In its “Preliminary Statement” of 26 June 2023 the European Union Election Observation Mission Sierra Leone (EU EOM) noted that, “Voters’ commitment to a democratic process [was] challenged by violence and lack of transparency at critical stages of elections”. It added further that, “The repatriation plan of results from the polling stations was not shared with EU EOM observers in most districts. The reception of materials and early stages of tabulation were slow, procedural omissions were observed. The process thus far was assessed by EU EOM observers as generally lacking transparency with meaningful observation of critical stages being impeded….”
Also in a tweet around June this year, the Bureau of African Affairs had noted that, “….The United States remains concerned with the lack of transparency around the tabulation process [of the June 24 general elections], which is at odds with democratic principles cherished by the people of Sierra Leone”.
When The Nationalist did a random survey yesterday around Abacha Street in central Freetown and Brookfields west of the capital on the proposed weekly sit-at-home strike action of the APC, most of the respondents said they would abide by any decision taken by the party.
In another development, the Inter Religious Council of Sierra Leone (IRCSL) is reported to be working behind the scenes to break the impasse by meeting with Dr Samura Kamara to prevail on him to concede and make peace with President Julius Maada Bio and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), according to the Cocorioko online newspaper.
But in one of his recent tweets, Dr Samura Kamara noted that, “….In the face of such deliberate institutional failure and daylight fraud, others, including some “Men of God”, are busy running around, desperately preaching Peace. I am compelled to state that many of these “Men and Women” know the Truth; it is just that they are not bold enough to speak the truth where they should….”
Meanwhile, the APC is still insisting on “a rerun of the [June 24] elections within six months to be overseen by credible individuals and institutions who will ensure a fair and transparent process.”