Commentary
By: Mohamed M. Sesay (Lucky)
As the adage says, “he, who preaches equity, must come with clean hands”. In this case, the dangling status of Dr. Samura Kamara’s candidacy for the June 24th 2023 has been visible to those who are seers (soothsayers) due to his pending corruption judgement from the High Court.
The three judge-led Commission of Inquiries of 2019, proved beyond every reasonable doubt that Dr. Samura Kamara, once Finance Minister, Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Corporation, was unfashionably engaged in massive state graft in order to enrich himself and family at the detriment of millions of Sierra Leoneans. With such nefarious state embezzlements under the leadership of former president Koroma, compelled all circumstantial grounds for Dr. Samura Kamara to be legally and morally unfit to run for the forthcoming general elections.
Legally speaking, section 41 of the 1991 constitution speaks on the qualification to run for the Office of President. That very Section 41 Paragraph (D) reads as fellows; “no person shall be qualified for an election as president unless he is otherwise qualified to be elected as a Member of Parliament”.
Now see the correlation in Section 76 paragraph (D) of the very 1991 constitution which states that, “No person shall be qualified for an election as a Member of Parliament if he has been convicted and sentenced for an office which involves fraud and dishonesty”. Since the constitution provides same disqualifications for persons not to run for either president or Member of Parliament, the logical conclusion is that Dr. Samura Kamara stands maximum risk of forfeiting his chance of contesting the June 24th elections if the High Court finds him guilty in his corruption case.
It is therefore, sardonic for the Main Opposition All People’s Congress Party (APC) to have re-selected Dr. Samura Kamara as their Presidential Aspirant for the June 24th 2023 multi-tier elections. The aforesaid legal and moral implications for the candidacy of Dr. Samura Kamara, is very mammoth which might automatically disqualify his Presidential Aspiration for the 2023 elections. That grandiloquent pending High Court Judgement against Dr. Samura Kamara for his colossal immoral dishonesty and fraud is equally against moral etiquette of any civilized society where corruption is condemned holistically.
As premised in the 2019 Commissions of Inquiries, the Government White Paper noted recommendations that Dr. Samura M. W. Kamara, Former Minister of Finance and Economic Development/Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, owned or was in control of property, to wit, thirty-one (31) vehicles between July 2008 and January 2018 disproportionate to his official emoluments; thereby unjustly enriching himself at the expense of the State of Sierra Leone. Dr. Samura Kamara also failed to declare the said vehicles (a mandatory requirement of law) of which such failure constituted an act of dishonesty.
By reason of such failure according to the Government White Paper, Dr. Samura Kamara is in contravention of section 122 (a) of the Anti-Corruption Act 2008 and accordingly liable to prosecution under the said statute. The Government White Paper also accepted the recommendation put forward by the Commission of Inquiry that the case of Dr. Samura Kamara be referred to the Anti- Corruption Commission for investigation and other law enforcement Government action.
To this end of the commentary, one ideally deserves to be reminded that the ruling of that three Judge-led Commission of Inquiries according to section 148 subsection (1) of the 1991 constitution, is tantamount to the ruling of the High Court of Sierra Leone. Thus, one can sense the dangling status of Dr. Samura Kamara’s Presidential candidacy for the June 24th General Elections.
