There comes a moment when an electoral body stops being an umpire and becomes a contestant itself. For the APC’s Independent Electoral Management Committee (IEMC), that moment is now.
The conduct of the IEMC Boss, Mr Hassan Kamara, and his team has raised serious and legitimate concerns among ordinary party members about the credibility, transparency, fairness and integrity of the APC’s internal electoral process.
Let us be clear on one thing: The IEMC was not established to create doubt. It was established to clear doubt. It was not created to give party members reasons to question its neutrality. It was created to guarantee credible, impartial and transparent elections.
That mandate is now in tatters.
From Koinadugu to Bombali, from Constituency 044 to District Chairmanship elections, the same complaints are echoing: delegate lists tampered with overnight, overvoting cancelled in one place only to reappear worse in another, results announced that do not match ballots cast, and electoral officers holding closed-door meetings with interested politicians.
If allegations of electoral manipulation, favouritism, bribery and misconduct are being raised in almost every district, the leadership cannot continue to hide behind silence. Silence is not strategy. Silence is complicity.
No electoral institution should operate without accountability, and no team should be above scrutiny, not even the IEMC Boss, Mr Hassan Kamara.
We have heard of IEMC officials who behave like political godfathers, deciding who wins before voting starts. We have heard of officials who move polling centres from Kabala to Makeni not for security, but for the convenience of manipulation – because it is easier to control tired, hungry and displaced delegates far from home.
This is not the APC we know. The APC that built its name on grassroots strength cannot now be held hostage by a few men in suits carrying ballot boxes.
The APC grassroots do not ask for much. They do not ask for money or positions. They ask for four simple things: *fairness, justice, transparency and credible elections.*
Is that too much to ask?
The future and unity of our great party depend on a process that every member can trust – from the smallest village in Koinadugu to the biggest zone in Freetown. If a member loses an election that was fair, he will dust himself off and work for the party. If a member is robbed through ballot stuffing, he will not forgive, and the party will be fractured from within.
This is how we lost 2018. This is how we lost 2023. We rigged ourselves before the SLPP rigged us.
The IEMC Boss must understand: You cannot preach democracy to the nation when you cannot practice democracy inside your own party. You cannot tell the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone to be impartial when your own IEMC is accused of bias.
It is time for the IEMC leadership to come out and address these concerns openly.
Explain to the party:
Why were elections cancelled for overvoting in Koinadugu only to produce more overvoting in Makeni?
Who authorized the bussing of Constituency 044 delegates to Bombali?
What was discussed in those alleged closed-door meetings with sitting MPs and IEMC officers?
The IEMC must restore confidence in its electoral responsibilities now, or step aside for a more credible team to do so.
The APC does not need a perfect IEMC. It needs an honest IEMC.
History will not remember the IEMC Boss, Mr Hassan Kamara, for the elections he conducted, but for the trust he destroyed. Enough of the manipulation. The grassroots are watching