Attempts To Hijack APC Flagbearer Polls Exposed

Titus Boye-Thompson, Accra Ghana

At such a critical time in the party’s development, the grassroots supporters of the All People’s Congress are asking for  clear guidance on how the Party intends to manage itself coming up to the Constituency, District and Regional elections slated for next year 2026, knowing full well that these elections would provide the pool of Delegates that would be expected to elect the flag bearer for the Party come the 2028 national polls. There is an addage that “those who fail to plan are by such conduct, planning to fail,” a pointer to the somewhat laxed attitude of the APC National Executive to address the multi faceted issues the party faces even before reaching the lower level elections. It would be foolhardy for the National Secretary General to play the “Ostrich gambit”-  to bury his head on the sand leaving his butt exposed but fully assured that he is protected from all dangers from the gusting winds in a sandstorm. The planning for these elections should have started by now to ensure that a robust membership records system is in place, and by educating our people at the coalface of such polls to understand the rules and to become au fait with their responsibilities during the exercise. What is beginning to send shockwaves of doubt throughout the grassroots are the whisperings of incapacity and the threat of a massive elections fraud that is being planned against the People’s mandate accross voting stations to secure an unbalanced delegates list in favour of a single individual at the National Flag Bearer polls. “They are trying to unleash the Team A tactics again, but this time, we hear that it is for a different beneficiary,” said Thaimu Kamara, a shoe trader at Guard Street in Freetown. It is becoming alarmingly clear that the APC Executives have opted to reject the call by the party’s own current flag bearer for “electoral justice,” because they do not think that they themselves would pass the test of integrity and openness when they come to conduct or otherwise supervise the APC’s own internal elections leading up to the 2026 Flag bearer polls. In the event, the Party has lost a major opportunity to hold the Bio government to account for its conduct of the last national elections in 2023. For that reason also, many now believe that the result of this laxity would lead to another defeat come 2028, if the lower levels are so openly flagrant in its disregard for transparency and accountability, such that most of the major stakeholders would end up rejecting the winner.

Why the distrust?

One reason for the absence of trust between the grassrots and the APC Executive stems from the manner in which the Executive has jetissioned the calls for electoral justice even when it is still party policy and stakeholders have been publicly admitting that the elections of 2023 were stolen by the sitting government. The distrust is also being fermented by the ongoing attempt to whitewash the elections for flag bearer in accordance with the 2017 Constitution, and then feign a time constraint that could resuilt in an electoral management team being tasked with selecting a leader and flag bearer, as in what happened at Makeni in 2017. Political watchers warn against this sceneario, believing that it was this same fiasco at Makeni, even though it gave the Party a credible candidate as flag bearer, that caused the widespread rift which subsists uptill now. No repeat of that act of singlehandedness would be good for the APC, and the Executive dare not even consider it. This time around, the grasssroots are ready to get engaged so that their choice, the choice that they recognize as being best for the party, would take the glory of the APC flag to the polls come 2028.

Another reason for the distrust is the emerging confusion generated by the potential conflict between party unity and filial bias. Party loyalty is a laudable objective all round, but when it is being hijacked to become the mantra for those whose actions in the past have destroyed the semblance of unity the party has always enjoyed, then it becomes mere lip service. Party Unity is not a term to be bandied about as a quip or false narrative, but rather, it must be exemplified by service, sacrifice and sentiments. Those who have served the party in opposition cannot simply be tossed to one side, because it is looking ever more likely that the APC stands a chance of winning the next elections. It is risky in politics to boast of a candidate that will make a clean break from the past because of the danger that such a clean break can become in the future. It is like saying that because your father has a headache and could not play football with you in the park, you should take him out to the hospital and then bring in a younger man to head your family!

Only those who have walked the walk can talk the talk!

There was a time when APC members were afraid to wear party colours and venture out to the streets of Freetown for fear of recriminations, but those times have been consigned to history becasue of the hard work and strategy of a focused technocrat like Dr Samura Kamara, while he was allowed to play an active role as the Party’s leader. While many feel that there needs to be a change at the helm of the party, the direction of this change can only be beneficial when the interests of all political actors are taken into account. In such a situation as we are faced, it may be well to be guided by the choice of the people rather than be dictated to by a demigod . For that matter, it would be a very bad precedence for the APC to allow itself to be led by the nose because someone comes up to say he is the choice of the former Chairman and Leader. No single person, not even Dr Siaka Probyn Stvens, was allowed that levity after he relinquished the position as Chairman of the Party. In the same vein, Dr Ernest Bai Korroma must reconsider his position on any further involvement in the day to day activities of the APC, allow himself to be the statesman that he is supposed to become and leave the Party to move on by itself. It is only then that he will command the full respect and support from all of us to even deify him and protect his legacy. To attempt to leverage the filial lolyalty owed by some of his cohorts inorder to further dismantle the political dispensation and the poition articulated by Dr Samura Kamara in his quest for “electoral justice”, would be a sad day for unity and progress in the APC. Interfering in the internal politics of the party or supporting a rogue trojan for flagbearer are all tactics that would upset or otherwise destabilize the chances of the APC getting back to power in 2028. There can only be one flag bearer of the APC at any given time, for now, it is Dr Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, so why on earth can’t the Party rally behind the flag and fight one single battle?!