The Sierra Leone voters will see us as failures if we present to them the same candidate, with the same political deficit which they rejected in November 2012 If violence and intimidation from the fan club of the failed presidential candidate Julius Bio was not enough to tear the party apart, they have now lunched an outrageous attacks on my person on the social media for opposing their twisted campaign to re-elect their leader. Some had used multiple fake names to insult my mother on public forum. One Demba Kanji Daramy had twice alleged that I am a “rapist”. This is someone who has never met me and I have never heard of him, until he insulted me on Facebook. His allegations constitute defamation and it has legal consequences, hence I have saved them. All these attacks are going on after their pa-o-pa leadership, Julius Bio, had declared he was ready for peace and called on his fans to stop insulting people. It is clear therefore that either Bio is incapable of controlling his fanatical fans or those they are acting in cohort with him. If as it seems Bio cannot control his fans to behave and engaged in leadership debate then how can he be trusted to lead a party? Despite these unprincipled insults, I am unshakeable in my determination to defend the core values of SLPP with the single objective of projecting the SLPP as a truly a national party, respected and appeals across the regions of Sierra Leone. Unlike the 2011 flag bearer campaign where the party election rule barred counteracting deception, misinformation and falsehoods to hoodwinked and steal the election, this time round, the party must discuss the suitability and competences of the flag bearer aspirants and lies will be confronted and exposed. This is because in the end, it is the party that will defend and sell its presidential candidate across the country. The lesson we learnt from the 2012 election was that the party was in a moral dilemma. How do we campaign on corruption and public theft against a government when we elected a flag bearer with similar background of corruption and allegation of public theft hanging over him? No one is a saint but if we asked the voters to elect us in government we must present them with a presidential candidate that is credible and the party can be proud to sell his record. And if our purpose in seeking power is to remove those forces such as corruption that have consistently hampered our nation’s development, then we have a responsibility both as SLPP and citizens to subject those who wants to lead our party to scrutiny. This is what all civilised democracies do. POPULARITY IS STATISCALLY BOGUS. In the case of Julius Bio the issues that should be of concern to the SLPP has gone beyond his excess baggage but whether he is electable at all. Critical to our understanding of his political impediment,(such as being widely perceived as a polarising figure) is to recognised that there are inherent dangers in re-electing a failed presidential aspirant having being rejected by the same electorate, because he will be facing the same critical electorate with the same political deficit and with nothing new about him. Oblivious to these weaknesses, Bio’s factional supporters are beating their chest to let everyone know that he is the popular politicians. At this stage, let me state the premise of my argument by asserting, emphatically, that the ownership of popularity within the Bio’s camp is not supported by logic, facts, election statistics and common sense. Firstly, one cannot claim to be popular when this cannot be translated in to national votes. I note that he (Bio) has nurtured a fan based the SLPP who are mostly young, aggressive and very disrespectful of elder. But with their behaviours, they can only alienate voters and cannot win a national election for SLPP. But a proper analysis of Bio’s performance in the 20012 election suggests that he did extremely poorly including Kono. In 2007, APC took 59 parliamentary seats with SLPP 43 and PMDC 10 seats; the latter was unprecedented for a new party. And in 2012 when Bio led SLPP to election, APC increased their parliamentary seats from 59 to 67, whereas SLPP was reduced to 42. Notwithstanding APC took seat in Kenema, the first in competitive election, as well as in Kailahun and Moyamba, which are traditional support bases. But the biggest losses were in Kono and the north where we lost all but one seat in Kono district and all the seats in the north under Bio. In the national poll results of 2007, Berewa obtained 704,012 votes -38.28 percent, Margai’s PMDC pulled 255,499- 13 .89 percent, which singularly explained why Berewa lost the 2007 election. Bio on the other hand pulled 34 .8 percent which was less than what Berewa had obtained in 2007. Indeed Dr Peter Tucker in his recent report on the meeting he held with party stake holders said Bio is only second to Berewa on popularity. If Berewa who was perceived as unpopular could be placed above Bio in popularity, according to Dr Tucker, then we should not fall for the campaign of popularity. Despite the huge votes pulled away from SLPP by Charles Margai, APC was only ahead by 2 percent in the first round with 44. 34 percent, of the national votes in the first round. Without Margai’s support for the APC in the second round, SLPP should have won by a clear margin. It is clear therefore that whilst the PMDC factor was singularly responsible for the incumbent SLPP losing the 2007 election, it is still not impressive when after the PMDC had disintegrated and returned to the SLPP, Bio still failed to win or even force a second round. To this extend, there is no valid reason for even contemplating re-electing Bio. Voters will see us as failures if you present the same candidate they had rejected. That is not a sensible path as SLPP is gifted with talented leadership materials we can sell. The argument is that the APC rigged the 2012 election but did we not say the same when Berewa lost in 2007. The difference is that we did not improve on our share of the national votes despite the much talked about the popularity of Julius Bio. According Yusuf Bangura, a retired UN officer, who wrote an article two months to the 2012 elections in Sierra Leone, the SLPP was a popular party but it flag bearer was not popular nationally, whereas the APC as a party was unpopular but it leader was popular. COALITION. Critical to a future SLPP flag bearer is the ability to forge a health workable consensus. A review of the current voting system should be on the table of discussion. Bio was elected by 38 percent of the delegate’s votes in 2011, meaning that just over 60 percent did not want him to be the flag bearer. Thus in an election with multiple candidates it is crucial and fair to adopt a system where the weakest candidates were eliminated until the strongest candidate emerged as the winner. Such candidate would have a clear mandate and be able to forge a broader alliances from all sections of the party than it currently exist. In my next article I will be appealing to all anti pa-o-pa forces, because we are in the majority, to form a grand coalition. It is obvious to me that Bio cannot improve on the 38 percent that elected him in 2011 under any circumstances; he can only go down having taken us to the worst election defeat. The party must look for a wining and presidential material not a factional leader. We do not know what a future flag bearer can do to take us to state house but what we do know is that Julius Bio has failed to take us to state house. Let us talk politics now and for Bio’s fan club members to stop the mammy cuss, rudeness and aggression to those who are opposed to his re -election campaign. Yankuba G Kai-Samba Former SLPP UK and Ireland Secretary General
POSTED BY YANKUBA KAI-SAMBA | 05/30/2014, 10:41 PM
