By Hassan I. Conteh

A senior APC member has hinted Africa24 the consequences that he believes await his party.

The Sierra Leonean based in Canadian prefers his name not be mentioned but however agreed his views to be captured by this press.

He talked through Whatsapp video explaining why he thought his party not to have chosen to walk on the path of ‘governance avoidance.’

“In the first place they are making a big mistake by avoiding not to participate in the next government under president Bio. I think, the idea is foolish because they will need more to challenge the ruling government in the next polls,” he shared his opinion on the matter.

Before the party signed a membership oath comprising 53, the learned Sierra Leonean Canadian based had given his view on the statement earlier made by APC’s 2023 presidential aspirant, Samura Kamara, that they would not partake in the governance of president Bio.

The decision by the party was largely due to allegations of election irregularities, ballot stuffing, vote tampering and lack of trust on the conduct of June 24 elections by the  electoral commission.

“We will not accept any skewed results by ECSL,” Samura had warned ahead of the polls on Saturday June 24.

Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone, however; announced officially that the incumbent president Julius Maada Bio had won his challenger, Kamara, pulling 56.17 percent of the votes.

That is above 55% of the country’s constitutional threshold on winning a presidential election.

The opposition candidate, Samura Kamara, pulled just 41.16 percent of the ballot votes cast.

Hearing the official results, APC (All People’s Congress) party stood by its decision to protest what it had referred as ‘skewed results’ in favour of the incumbent.

Outside observers mission such as UK, Carter Center, UK, France, Ireland and local observers had refused to accept the results and had called for it to be public to ensure transparency.

But the Chief electoral commissioner, Mr. Mohamed Konneh, has yet to say a word or act to do the needful as requested by the observers.

A local election observer group, NEW, has challenged ECSL’s results pointing that the official results do not correspond with NEW’s data assessment of about 90% of the polling stations across the country.

On their refusal stance to boycott parliament, APC through its principal advisory body, NAC, has signed a document, July 5, to take an aloof position in governance. The unanimous decision was informed by a party’s meeting held on Friday June 30, 2023.

The National Advisory Committee took the decision immediately it understood SLPP, the ruling government, had cleared almost all the seats in parliament.

While Mr Bio’s SLPP party got a share lion of 81 seats; APC had only 54 seats of a slow- cat share to sit at the Tower Hall, parliament.

It was swept down heavily on the ground by SLPP in the law house it had over the past two decades comfortably enjoyed victory.

But a member out of the 54 MPs had refused to tow the party line of action for a boycott.

Mohamed Bangura from Karene district, north of Sierra Leone, said he would go to parliament even though the party’s new and old constitution frowns at ‘anti-party activity’_ a clause once invoked to throw out a whole appointed and sitting vice-president, Sam Sumana, otherwise sacked, September 15, 2015, from his post by his boss, former president Ernest Bai Koroma.

The APC, however, has not taken a decision or made a statement regarding Mr. Bangura’s avoidance to refuse to honour a party’s decision on which flag post he had stood as an aspirant for MP.

However, many APC’s MPs inwardly who had been officially announced lately by electoral commission as winners may not be happy over the party’s tough decision. The Sierra Leonean-Canadian based shares his opinion on this:

“Those MPs had spent plenty money on campaign periods and they needed to recover that money. So why would a decision like that be taken for everyone to stay aside; it will render many of these MPs to become ever bankrupt. Then when 2028 election period nears, the party may not get money to run their campaign activities to remove SLPP from power,” he explained.

Other critics have argued that SLPP might, in turn, decide to run the country under a single party headed by president Bio.

And a ban on APC on the country’s governance activities is one that is also feared by APCians if the international community continues to play a passive and/or a subtle role of an English referee observing a match between England and Spain in an English home match.