By Mohamed Issa

There is no doubt about the anxiety of all Sierra Leoneans for the presence of the mediation team to intervene in the ongoing saga on the past elections that has been trumpeted by the aggrieved main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) party as one of their catalysts to characterize and exacerbate the acrimony that has been existing between them and their arch rival, the governing Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) from the time they lost power to the latter in 2018.

We are conscious of the fact that many other discontenting issues have over the years been propounded by our APC brothers and sisters which we are not oblivious of them that they will be part of the negotiation.

One among them is the outcome of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) that incarcerated many senior members and supporters of the despondent APC is the hidden bone in their flesh that needs a very thoughtful and unbiased political surgeon to handle it expertly.

Without going into the nitty-gritty of that awful episode, many peace loving citizens perceived it as the Abettor that no APC cohorts want to talk about because they abhorred it to the ebb. Without being economical with the truth, APC should be bold enough to present all their grievances on the table for deliberation together with the visitors. But they should also be conscious of the fact that the only barb that many other sober minded citizens will not agree with them is, the issues bothering on our national constitution because it will be interpreted as bad precedent that will warrant an amendment or serve as recipe for conundrum that needs to be addressed in the near future.

For instance, when the APC lost some Members of Parliament in the 2018 general elections based on constitutional procedure, they became infuriated and damped the provision and went haywire to shout as if they were not the architect of it.

The fact is, Sierra Leoneans are eager for total peace, which is why their perspective is imbedded in the robust intervention of this group as the right set of respectable people that will be able to hammer home the good news that they are waiting to hear, for which they have no doubt in them. We have come a long way for many years in maintaining our hard won peace after our eleven years civil war that inflicted immense suffering on us in all facets of life and we don’t want to even imagine those ugly years any more in our history.

At the end of the mediation, we will love to see SLPP and APC supporters embracing themselves as one united people and join hands together to call on UN, the IMF, the EU and other donor partners to come to our aid to remove us from this doldrums of retrogression. The fact is, Sierra Leoneans are nationalistically optimistic that final peace has come for which we are unanimously urgently calling the holder of our MCC package and all other money belonging to us to drop it now in our coffer without further delay.

In fact, what the mediation team should know is that the only language that Sierra Leoneans want to hear is peace and unity to portray our national pledge no-more-no less!