It is no longer news in the country that most of the bye-elections conducted in Sierra Leone over the past three years have been marred by violence; the Saturday, 14th January bye – election in Constituency 104, ward 369 in the Fourah Bay community which resulted in the blood spilling is no exception.
The main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) has in just 24 hours following the announcement of the results of the bye-election, categorically condemned the trend at which violence is occurring in the country especially during bye-elections, describing it as “reaching an alarming proportion” and noting that this has “given rise to mounting public anxiety and foreboding about the elections of November 2012.”
The SLPP position made clear by the Secretary General, Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie at a press conference held at the party’s headquarters yesterday, Monday, 16th January 2012 pointed out that many Sierra Leoneans “see the recent violent (political) incident in Freetown as a foretaste of what is likely to happen in the 2012 Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council elections, if appropriate actions are not put in place now to ensure fairness and probity in the run up to those elections.”
The Secretary General went on to condemn in no uncertain terms the bye- elections violence in Ward 369 in Constituency 104. “The SLPP strongly condemns both the stabbing of an APC stalwart Lansana Fadika and the serious assault inflicted on the SLPP Candidate Mohamed Kanu Mansaray by the sitting Member of Parliament of Constituency 104 Tunde Lewally,” the SLPP scribe posited, adding, “we are also appalled at the high-handedness and level of brutality against the SLPP Constituency 104 Chairman, Aziz Carew on the night of Sunday, 15th January instant by five truck loads of armed personnel of the Operational Security Division (OSD) of the Sierra Leone Police.”
He disclosed that the OSD personnel who were in the company of Internal Affairs Minister, Musa Tarawallie had gone to arrest the SLPP Constituency Chairman, and had in the process fired teargas canisters inside the house of the Chairman and according to him, “this caused Aziz Carew, his wife and children to go into coma.”
Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie maintained that the SLPP party is a party of peace being that it was the party that ushered in peace in the country in 2002 in the wake of the decade long war. He further maintained that all subsequent elections (2002/2007) conducted under the aegis of the party were conducted in very peaceful atmospheres.
He charged however that since the APC took over governance in 2007, the political landscape “has become marred by political violence, intimidation and thuggery, especially during bye-elections,” he maintained, adding, “People in this country have experienced the pain, trauma and anguish of political violence and would not want their hard-won peace to be disturbed any further,” the SLPP noted.
Portraying the APC party as a party of violence, the SLPP Scribe further charged “even between factions within the APC, their relations have been characterized by violence; no less, as was evident in Kono in the accident between the Vice President and the Minister of Internal Affairs in 2011 and in the incident between the District Chairman of the APC party in Kono and party stalwarts.”
The Party ‘s Secretary General called on both the government and international community to set up an independent and impartial investigations into both the spate of stabbings and other violent acts in Ward 369, and an independent and impartial investigation into the shooting and police brutality perpetrated against Aziz Carew and the Reporter of Radio Democracy 98.1.
By Betty Milton
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