Though it is not constitutionally mandatory, it has been the norm for our political parties since the introduction of the Second Republic in 1996 to strike religious balance in the endorsement of our presidential candidates and their running-mates.
The first presidential candidate of Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in 1996, the late former President Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of blessed memory, for example, endorsed a Christian, the late former Vice President Dr. Albert Demby and later another Christian, the late erstwhile Vice President Solomon Ekuma Berewa respectively.
The second SLPP President under the Second Republic, His Excellency President Brig. (Rtd) Julius Maada Bio, followed the same pattern of behaviour that is usual or expected, which is now in the DNA of the political party. In 2018, the SLPP presidential candidate chose a devout Muslim brother, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh as his running-mate.
Now that the new Local Government Act 2022 has prescribed that candidates for mayoral and chairmanship positions should have running-mates, one would have thought that the norm for religious balance should be strictly followed by all registered political parties with mayoral and chairmanship candidates, but that did not apply in many of those parties.
The SLPP, as always, followed the norm of religious balance around the country as their DNA. The SLPP mayoral candidate in the Freetown Municipality, Mohamed Gento Kamara, who is a Muslim, for example, endorsed a Christian man as his running-mate. In the same vein, SLPP candidate for the position of chairmanship in the Western Area Rural District (WARD), Eugene Cole, also endorsed a Muslim woman as his running-mate.
But the mayoral candidate of the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC), Yvonne Denise Aki-Sawyer, who is Christian, deliberately ignored the norm of religious balance and chose her tribesman, Kweku Lisk, who is also Christian, as her running-mate. If both candidates are Christian, then is there no Aku or Muslim Creoles in the APC who Yvonne Aki-Sawyer will repose confidence in to serve as her running-mate?
It is not for nothing we are asking this question because if the notion of religious balance is taken into consideration here, the Aku are supposed to be the running-mate given that mayoral position in the Municipality belongs to the Creoles. The Aku are the Muslim Creoles originally known as the recaptives following the abolition of the slave trade and they are the fourth group of settlers that formed the Creole community in the then Crown Colony of Freetown after the Black Poor, Nova Scotchians and the Maroon. So why should Yvonne Aki-Sawyer and the APC marginalize the Aku who are also qualified for the mayoral position as part of the Creole community?
By and large, the SLPP do not seem to depart from their norm of religious balance in the endorsement of running-mates since 1996 and this is unique, while the main opposition APC often departs from that norm which shows complete disregard for religion.