By Hassan I. Conteh
The ongoing mediation between the ruling, Sierra Leone People’s Party, SLPP and All People’s Congress (APC) is touted by most Sierra Leoneans with misgivings about its outcome.
A three-day dialogue chaired by AU, ECOWAS and Commonwealth between the dominant parties in Sierra Leone started on Monday 16, October and will end on Wednesday at the Bintumani hotel, Aberdeen village, and west of Freetown.
The dialogue between politicians in the country is sought to provide a lasting solution on the logjam between members of Sierra Leone most popular parties, APC and SLPP.
The dialogue seeks to bring two parties on a round table negotiation to discuss a way that will allow both parties’ members to reach a unanimous decision for the country’s peace and stability.
Since the ruling government was declared winner of Sierra Leone’s general elections after voting on June 24 this year, the opposition, APC, had refused to participate in all governance activities in the country.
The party’s National Advisory Committee, asked it elected MPs not to go to parliament until a fresh election is organized.
APC said the elections’ results which were announced on June 27 by chief electoral commissioner, Mohamed Konneh, were rigged and that they lacked transparency and integrity.
Recently, European Union in Sierra Leone had said the June 27 elections’ results announced by Electoral Commission for
Sierra Leone were never credible, adding that none of the two main tightest contenders, Julius Maada Bio of the SLPP and Dr. Samura Kamara of the APC, scored the constitutional threshold of 55 per cent that would have enabled each candidate to have been declared a winner.
In the past few months after the elections in Sierra Leone, the United States of America, Britain, Carter Centre ( an American based elections observer mission) and a coalition of local and international civil society organizations, had disputed ECSL’s electoral results referring to it as incredible and untrue.
However, Africa Union, ECOWAS and Commonwealth are mediating between APC and the embattled government on a round table for a possible compromise to be reached by the two political parties in the country.
But, many Sierra Leoneans have gone far to predict that elections might be held in December this year.
“We hope that after the negotiations we will have a good message from them. And, I am sure, by today [Tuesday] we shall start getting news in trickle about the outcome as to whether we are going to vote again or not,” says Ibrahim Kamara, a teacher in a private school in Freetown.
But, another citizen who lives in Waterloo, the outskirts of Freetown, Mrs Bernard doubts Kamara’s comments and she believes ‘fresh elections’ in Sierra Leone will not be hold.
“Let me tell you, my sister in America [USA] has told me days ago that no elections will happen here; it is only going to be peace talk only.”