By: Mohamed M. Sesay
The Speaker of the Sixth Parliament of the Second Republic of Sierra Leone Hon. Dr. Abass Chernor Bundu has on Tuesday the 25th of July 2023, admonished that if the All People’s Congress Party (APC) thinks foreigners from outside Africa have a right to come again to the country to help them take control of the country’s governance.
He went further to note that anything else that is not their entitlement under the sovereign laws of the country, then they are still living in the dark ages of colonialism which had long ago been banished to the dustbin of history.
Speaker Abass Bundu expressed that there are 54 seats reserved exclusively for those Members-Elect of the All-Peoples’ Congress Party (APC) who are yet to present themselves to the House to take their seats. Like all of you, he said they too have been declared duly elected by the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) and, apart from Hon. Mohamed Bangura who has taken his seat, all the other 53 Members are yet to do so.
‘’I want to take this opportunity to specially acknowledge the presence in the Chamber of the Hon. Mohamed Bangura who has been well advised and directed to come and take his seat to represent the people who had voted for him. I thank the Hon. Mohamed Bangura for his wise decision, and I know this nation owes you a deep and abiding sense of gratitude for that singular patriotic action on your part’’, he said.
Speaker Bundu especially appealed to the APC and their sense of patriotism and duty to the country not to sit idly by and allow the present stalemate in their party to persist. If they do, he said the result could be devastating and detrimental to their party and ultimately to the country as a whole as well as to the democratic polity of the country. Under their watch and leadership, this country promulgated the extant.
He added that the 1991 Constitution eschewed the one-party system of government that had governed the country since 1978 and reintroduced a multiparty democratic system as the only legal and acceptable polity that must prevail in this country and be held sacred by the entire citizenry. He said the 1991 Constitution proclaims that this country shall never again return to the abomination of the one-party system. More specifically, he noted that every citizen is enjoined to participate in and defend all democratic processes and practices and render assistance to appropriate and lawful agencies in the maintenance of law and order.
“I therefore want to appeal to all those eminent citizens to whom I have referred to step up to their sense of national duty and not allow their Party to be hijacked again by a small band of greedy, selfish and self-seeking politicians whose era is already well past and spent”, he stated.
Speaker Bundu continued that not too long ago, the APC Party sat idly by and allowed a situation to be nurtured for many years almost to the point of becoming entrenched within the framework of the APC until one of their own summoned the courage of conviction to having his day in Court by instituting legal proceedings against the APC and its Executive.
Mercifully, he expressed that the Court accepted the need to exorcise the entire APC Party Executives at all levels that had outlived their mandates and liberate the Party from the darkness of domination and bring it back to the bright light of compliance with the sacred democratic provisions of the very 1991 Constitution of which they were the architect.
‘’Now, another darkness is looming on the horizon, and this is why I want today to appeal to all those eminent statesmen of the APC Party to rise up and liberate their Party from the clutches of despotism and authoritarianism before it is dragged again to the precipice of destruction and extinction. Walk-outs and boycotts are political tools of yesteryears; they no longer have value and relevance, and they are no longer fit for purpose in this 21st Century of participatory democracy. The truth of the matter is palpably simple. If you withdraw yourself from participating in the process of decision-making, then you should not be angry when others who agree to participate decide for you and your destiny,” he warned.