By Mohamed Kamara
With the local and international community focused on the outcome of the Unity Agreement based on amendments for democratic free, fair and transparent electoral process, in a country that practices a multi-party system with a numerical strength of sixteen registered political parties, talks of power-sharing without electoral consensus has been described as a violation of democracy.
Mabinty Tarawally is a Sierra Leonean student at the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. She said during a phone interview that talks especially those pointed at the governance system play a great rule to ridicule a process especially that relating to peace and has the potential to split society and breed a conclusion of contradicting views, opinions and commentaries from its citizenry.
Mabinty said of recent, one rumor worth referencing is that which has to do with a power-sharing government between the incumbent SLPP and the main opposition. She said this undermines the rate of morality in understanding the credentials for rule in a country with a multi-party system. She said the constitution of Sierra Leone does not give neither party the monopoly to rule nor the authority for power-sharing without electoral consensus. She said the Sierra Leone electoral system consists of sixteen registered political parties with equal rights and privileges to contest in any election. She said until election vote calls for a coalition to be formed pending the result of a power-sharing government is impossible.
She said prioritizing to make decisions is contrary to the constitution and such rumors are baseless but have the potential to create liabilities of any kind in the near future if the authorities fail to popularize the constitutional prohibition. She said few months ago, another rumor which misinformed some APC supporters that President Bio will hand over power on a specific date saw them coming to Freetown to congratulate their new President. She said they would have stayed home if there had been mechanisms official in nature to counteract the misinformation.
She said the other rumor that has attracted the international community is the alleged usage of the Sierra Leone passport by a drug baron wanted by Turkish government for narcotic-related crimes and gangsterism after being deported hand-cuffed from the Middle East. She said on the one hand, it raises a lot of questions about the control of our passport. How did he get it? When? And who signed it? Whether certain figures at the Immigration Department are connected with the drug lord or influenced by certain personalities, is another question.
She said on the other hand, Sierra Leone has a visa ban problem with the United States. Such information could trigger the process over expectations of lifting the ban. It will create curiosity with greet focus on the country’s daily foreign visitors and may exceed in cyber hacking for intelligence purposes. She said although the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Mr. Timothy Kabba has refuted the allegations, Mabinty said the Turkish Ambassador to Sierra Leone would have been the right person to follow up the statement and speak on behalf on his country.
