Dr Columba Blango
Sierra Leone Telegraph: 01 July 2017
The results of yesterday’s local council election in Kychom saw the APC lose an election in the North for the first time in nine years. The election was a battle of the titans for supremacy at several levels, and it also answered several questions.
The Independent candidate – Ibrahim Kamara, won the bye-election in ward 139, Constituency 42 in the Samu Chiefdom, the birth place of Alhaji Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella.
The people of Samu rejected SLPP due to the continuous disrespect shown to their favorite son, and opted for an independent candidacy. As a man of the people, KKY respected his people’s decision.
The APC threw everything at this election including their titans – two APC presidential aspirants Alimamy Petito Koroma and Dr. Sam Sesay, the APC Secretary General – Osman Yansanneh, the Chief of Staff to the President, and the interloper – Robin Falley who is the deputy Secretary General of the APC and parliamentarian for Kailahun – who was permanently camped in Kychom for one week.
In fact, it is alleged that Alimamy Petito Koroma appointed himself as one of the polling agents in Balansera. The APC team was also backed by a full contingent of police, 20 vehicles, and lots of cash.
This is the first defeat of APC in any election – at any level in the Northern province in nine and half years. Ibrahim Kamara won with 881 votes, Mr. Mohammed Kanu of APC had 871 votes and Mr. Alusine Mansaray of ADP had 27 votes.
The Paoparistas have downplayed the victory by saying the Independent candidate only received about 50% of the votes.
In fact, that is exactly our reason for supporting a new vision and the candidacy of any one with national appeal – i.e. one who can score well across the country and does not need a “straight-line” 80% from one ethno-regional location.
This victory over APC and ADP is important for many other reasons too.
In one move KKY may have answered all his harshest critics. Yes, he has a base in the North and in his chiefdom.
Yes, he has done what his brother Foday could not do in 20 years. Yes, he knows local politics or he is a fast learner.
He has also proven that beyond academic credentials, he is cunning and tactical enough to defeat APC’s best operators.
Yes, he also beat Alpha Timbo – two-to-one in February this year in their delegate contest. As some of us who know KKY since school days at CKC have warned, never under-estimate this man.
Finally, KKY has answered the nymphs JJ Blood and Prince Harding. Indeed, KKY was not at the press conference on Wednesday because he went to all the villages to mobilize his people against APC for this great victory.
Low minds like JJ prefer subterfuge and fake popularity to win contests. We in the KKY Movement win by superior intellect and strategic planning.
As a Liberian who was raised, schooled, and once worked in Sierra Leone, I would like to congratulate the government and people of that country for ensuring free, fair, farsighted and ethical by – elections in Kychom, Kambia District. The peaceful atmosphere under which that race was conducted underscores the fact that politics in the “lion mountain” (as Portuguese navigatior Pedro da Cintra, or some similar name, reportedly described her) has come a very long way, in deed. All peace – loving people in the Mano River (MRU) basins should applaud and emulate this transformative example of how elections henceforth ought to be handled: let the will of the electorates prevail at all times!
With Yumkellah candidacy,with or without SLPP,many will following him,including me.our country needs someone with vision and exposure to move it forward.
You go neutral Dr. Yumkella the Lord is with you.
Waow, this is a wake up call to the APC party, there must be changes now to their ways of running the Great Republic of Sierra Leone.
The people support the APC party but they are fed up with it because of so many reasons, now they start speaking louder.so congrats to the winner. I am not happy because APC lost that sit, but its a democratic way of expressing their feelings towards their own future. So the result most be respected. Hurray to all the voters, asalamualaikum.
This win by the independent candidate in Kychom in the Kambia through the hard work, support and blessing of the KKY movement and Dr. Yumkella, sends a clear message to all honest, sincere, hardworking and dedicated Sierra Leoneans that there is a better way to succeed in politics in Sierra Leone.
It is through commitment, honesty, the use of opportunity with responsibility and the rule of law, not opportunistic, unaccountable and disrespect for decency and civil norms that the current ruling party, the APC, and its sister clone the Paopa faction of the SLPP thieving and cheating way.
It signals a tectonic shift in the political landscape in Sierra Leonean politics, that the days of roguery, chicanery, equivocation, cheating and double standards in politics are over.
Dr. Yumkella needs to therefore use this Kambia experiment as a case study that can be replicated across Sierra Leone, and I can bet my last dollar that the people of Sierra Leone are ready for change, and will warmly reciprocate to an injection of respect for the electorate, and discourse in Sierra Leonean politics
The message to the SLPP is: If the country wanted to stay with a rogue party, rogue group of people that have perfected roguery, manipulation, thieving, tribalism, nepotism and disrespect for the rule of law, they know what to do. They will stay with the “APC”, as the refrain is, it is better to stay with devil you already know rather than…
However, most honest, dedicated, law abiding and peace loving people do not like the APC way, and have therefore stayed with the SLPP because of the philosophy ingrained in her DNA by her forebears – “One Country, One People”.
However, majority of SLPP supporters have not bargained for the roguery, disrespect for due process, abuse of the rule of law, and outright thuggery of the Prince Harding led executive and the Paopa trickery and cheating going on in the current SLPP.
Thus, as I have said in other comments I have made on Facebook and the Sierra Leone Telegraph, Dr. Yumkella should continue to conceptualize the conundrum that confronts honest, law abiding and peace loving members of the SLPP with an aim of finding a better model or best practice to chart a better way forward for the party and the country.
As I see it, this win in Kychom is a shot in the bowel of politics in Sierra Leone, and the emergence of a model or a “better way forward”, if you will, that can be used as an experiment that can be generalized across Sierra Leone for an independent to take State House as majority of Sierra Leoneans are yearning for change, but do not like what is happening within the current SLPP.
The logical alternative is an independent party headed by a competent leader that has respect for due process and the rule of law.