Expecting ECOWAS Parliamentary Delegation In Freetown

The scheduled visit by the ECOWAS Parliamentary delegation to Sierra Leone, predicated on falsehoods reported by APC party apparatchiks, should be firmly embraced by the SLPP Parliamentary leadership and the new Maada Bio administration, so that the correct narrative of the events, as they unfolded in Parliament is entirely laid out and understood.

For a party who while in governance had exhibited such callous disdain for the institutions of ECOWAS, the irony and hypocrisy of the APC leadership are not at all entirely lost on us.

This delegation’s visit will afford the people of the ECOWAS sub-region and the broader international community, an accurate picture of the events that unfolded during the opening of parliament. Any objective observers must have thoroughly debunked thanks to news media and social media videos now making the rounds, the original APC false narrative, that they were innocent victims.

The genesis of the events is the rabble-rousers, such as Mohammed Bangura, who encouraged other APC MPs to leave their seats and charge the desk of the Clerk of Parliament.

They created a frenzied mob-like atmosphere, vandalizing government records and property right in the Well of parliament.  Their actions ignited high potential for actual physical violence with the SLPP MPs, had the SLPP MPs not exhibited such calm disposition by remaining in their seats throughout the melee.

These were some of the precipitating events that led to the removal of violent, unruly APC MPs from the Well of Parliament.

We hope that the ECOWAS parliamentary delegation can knock some sanity into the heads of the APC party leadership to prevail on their non-petitioned and non- judicial injunction MPs to return to Parliament as the business of the people awaits them.

We only demand decorum and non-violence by the APC, as the SLPP had in the past when parliamentary walkouts over policy disagreements had occurred.

Walkouts such as in 2013, 2014 and 2015 by SLPP MPs over the election of the past Speaker and the national population census never caused the SLPP MPs to charge the Well and threaten violence.

They quietly walked out of the proceedings, and that is what we expect from the honorable members of Parliament!

Commentary and analysis By Kortor Kamara