By Ragan M. Conteh
For what appeared to be a peaceful handling of the National Grand Coalition (NGC)’s meeting on Friday, a troop of Sierra Leone Police allegedly had to forcefully disrupt the quarterly meeting held on Friday.
The incident occurred at the party’s headquarters at Naimbana Street in Freetown.
One of the NGC Executive member, Alimamy Kamara, confirmed to this medium on Saturday that the police disrupted their quarterly national executive meeting. He asserted that the meeting was organized to decide on the party’s allegiance with the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP).
“One of the proposed agenda of the meeting was to ask members whether the NGC is to quit from the allegiance with SLPP or not, “he said.
“ It’s the right of their party to quit from anything at any time.”
Musa Alimamy climed that the police rudely and violently disrupted their meeting, adding that they ordered them to leave the premises of their party headquarters.
Meanwhile, on the developing issue, the police had released a statement on Friday, claiming that the party planned on deciding on a “very crucial issue” that could have prompted mixed opinions and tensions among the party members.
Despite Musa held a contrary view to the police, the police’s notice had claimed that police presence at the party’s headquarters was to provide security. They said acts of “physical and verbal confrontation” ensued during the meeting among the party members.
This unfortunate incident, the notice went on, could be traced back to 2023 when the National Grant Coalition formally joined a “progressive allegiance” with the Sierra Leone People’s Party.
The progressive allegiance document was signed by the party’s then-flagbearer, Dr Kandeh Yumkellah and SLPP’s president Julius Maada Bio on the 23rd April, 2023.
Reports gathered recently before the incident on Friday revealed that members of NGC party hierarchy are displeased with the outcome of the allegiance, with the outcome not gone as previously planned.
The allegiance has, so far, promised NGC political appointments in exchange of their supports to SLPP.
The said allegiance, moreover, now induces a growing disappointment within the party as it lost all their parliamentary seats to the SLPP.
The situation thus led to heartbreaking tweets by Kandeh Yumkellah who had also lost his parliamentary seat to the SLPP in Kambia.
Nonetheless Kandeh Yumkellah blamed his lost to the Proportional Representation System, which had been enacted by parliament for the June 23rd elections even though he had debated in favour of the PR system before the polls.