By: James Kamara-Manneh
If you are stunned about the trending video pervading social media where the President Bio is humbly requesting the return of Kandeh Yumkella to the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), you are not alone! Such cannot totally take me off guard simply because am in Sierra Leone where anything can happen.
I have witnessed and read about strange happenings in the political landscape in the 60/70’s where cross carpeting was the order of the day. In recent times, before the 2018 general election Chief Sumanoh Kapen who was then Chairman of the SLPP party switched allegiances to the then ruling party-ALL PEOPLE CONGRESS (APC), at a time he was mostly needed to take over the governance from the ruling regime.
Another was an SLPP presidential aspirant Usman Boie Kamara who pitched tents with the APC. At the time of his declaration for the then ruling All Peoples Congress APC he said his decision to join the APC is because the Sierra Leone Peoples Party SLPP failed to work with its motto which hinges on unity.
The former SLPP presidential flag-bearer contender told a mammoth crowd that many people advised him to quit politics after he lost the bid to be the SLPP presidential candidate but he ignored them because he wanted to support President Ernest Koroma in developing the country.
We’ve also witnessed other politicians who for selfish reasons abandon their former party for a ruling regime at the time, whiles in reality some are just playing smart with our intelligence.
Kandeh Yumkellah being a well-known personality across the globe; he left the United States to return to his motherland to flame up his political ambition in the SLPP party. He came home with full excitement and enthusiasm to share his knowledge, Institutional skills, experience, exposure and contacts that he has acquired over the years.
His intension to lead the SLPP to state house after been in the wilderness for almost a decade and more, KKY as he is commonly called was met with stiff resistance within the rank and file of a party where his father was one of the founding members.
With such disappointment, he established the KKY movement with the aim of bringing back internal party democracy that is anchored in fighting for social justice and the protection of the rights of all citizens – regardless of their tribe, region, and religious or political affiliation.
At a press conference he organized in 2020 he said “democracy has been suffocated, stifled and rendered meaningless within the SLPP and to some extent in our nation. Politics has been reduced to corruption and kleptocracy by political elites. Cabals justify that it is the turn of this group or that ethnic agglomeration to eat or have access to the national treasury.”
However, it could be argued that the political scene is begigining to take a different trajectory for the better. President Bio is changing the narrative. He has exhibited statesmanship in executing his ‘military-political personality format.’ Recently, an olive branch was extended to one time Presidential Spokesman, Minister of Mines and Minister of Information from the main opposition APC. Honorable Alpha Khan is serving in the present ruling SLPP government.
He recently gained an executive appointment in the portfolio of Resident Minister North West to serve his place of origin. Over the weekend president Bio made several visits and attended funerals of Paramount Chiefs, but Kambia was the masterstroke and consummation of his itinerary. Every move or step of the President is a deliberate political action and cannot be easily comprehended with just a surface glance. In Kambia president Bio took the SLPP back to its heritage and literally handed the party back to its original founders. Later, in a show of magnanimity laced with latent political savvy, he asked perhaps the most prominent product of Kambia Dr. Kandeh Yumkella to join him build a better Sierra Leone.
By extending the olive branch to Yumkella, President Bio has taken the moral high ground and left the former with an option that could make or kill him politically.
As supporters awaits his final decision whether to return to a party built by his late father and where many others suffered in jail for twenty-five years or will remain in the National Coalition for Change (NGC), where there is little or no hope of a third force to take over ‘ALUSINE or ALHASSAN’, talk less of him becoming the next president.
His decision will determine his political future.
If SLPP should remain in power after President Bio`s second term in office there is a need to nature someone who is not just a politician, but a technocrat with experience hailing from the north. KKY is a household name amongst the northerners. His popularity cannot be put into question when he contested to become a Member of Parliament he won resoundingly.
Since becoming a Member of Parliament, KKY has been pushing his agenda of good governance, democracy, human right and more. The platform to actualize his dreams rests in his hands. But he has to deal with a complicated political environment in how to deal with the existing critical issues of the nation to pursue that vision and message of hope, opportunity and transformation…
May be that dream could be actualized if only he should return to the green boys.