Titus Boye-Thompson, London
That “respect for structure” has become a popular phrase amongst young stakeholders in the APC is not by accident. The phrase is used mainly to restrain any unbridled surge for power or influence in the party by what are referred to as upstarts and pretenders. Interestingly, the phrase is now widely misunderstood to mean a system for pushing through more radical influences within the party hierarchy to the extent that a movement to hijack the strategic orientation of the party is sacrificed for personal ambitions or the promotion of a separatist ideology.
The “Team A” concept for example is one such abrogation of influence activated by the usurpation of the political heirarchy in order to capture the internal processes through a manipulation of the selection and election of lower level delegates to the Party ‘s National Delegates Conference (NDC).
The Team A concept was entirely repugnant to open democratic principals because it was fired up by a demobilized lower level structure beginning from how the Party’s ward officials and executives are elected right through to Regional and Nationl delegates that eventually have the right to vote at the election of thenflag bearer and executives of the Party.
Many who witnessed the operations of the Team A movement at the last NDC were appalled at how openly brutal the system was put into place. Whole frameworks of democratic decorum and precepts were abandoned to the detriment of party unity.
The arrangements for registering and processing votes of delegates were mishandled because those who were tasked with the duty to over see the operation of a free and fair vote were already compromised by the narrative of a groundswell powerhouse that was characterised by theTeam A tag. In the end, many were goaded, some railroaded into acquiescing to an acceptance of the Team A concept as a winning contruct. The reality was not to follow the thesis of a radical movement for victory at the polls.
Chernoh Maju Bah and Bai Mahmoud Bangura who pioneered the Team A project are now being vilified for what was clearly an operation that took advantage of the emerging popularity of the Party’s frontrunner for flagbearer and then immediately after, failed to hold the project together in the national stage because evidently, the gerrymandering of votes at the lower levels of the party was not repeated at the national level. In a brief submission, the Team A concept works when the movement is built around influencers alligned to an existing structure.
The APC ‘s 2023 campaign at the national level lost traction when it came to ward and constituency levels in a very dramatic way. Inadequate resources were allocated to those cohorts where traditionally, the MPs and Councillors whose fortunes are on the line, would have put in effort to rally the APC vote. In a nutshell, the precepts of the proportional representation model which mandated that success was determined by positioning on a list, the impetus for individual campaigns waned especially where many potential candidates witnessed the retrograde selections and placings based on patronage.
The difficulty for the APC at this time is that the rudimental failures of the Team A experiment continue to fester and plague the party.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the discrepancies of Chernoh Maju Bah with an insidious campaign for leadership that is being promoted by a cabal of neo radicals and whose actions are manifested by open violence and social media blackmail is inimical to party discipline. Moreover, their characteristic style embedded in a philosophy of seeking to impose a hegemony after imposing a hijack of the APC party is now openly vaunted by their own naked quest for power.
Some serious observers are now beginning to warn against the ominous signs of the hegemony and conscious minds now doubt whether the survival of the emerging political dispensation is a true path for the APC.
The soundness of party unity as a goal above an insidious singular ideology is more pronounced. Actions aimed at securing the aspirations of a few against the natural tendencies of constructive nationalism – the bedrock of the APC ideology, is at risk of being promoted by this brutal quest for power. Consequently, the ramifications of a tribal hegemony in a political party known for its traditional plurality cannot sit well with its core values of openness and respect for the internal structures that have guided this institution all these years.
The way forwards is for the party to rebuild transparency within its internal structures so that narrative of having “respect for structures” regains its true meaning of allowing policies and decision making to be done in accordance with the plurality of the party. The creeping profligacy of one group over all others must not be allowed to fester. Moving forwards, we must call attention first of all that to respect the party structure for now is to adhere to the Party’s official position especially with respect to the outcome of the 2023 elections, the dialogue agreements and the Tri-partite discourse currently ongoing.
Where we can, stakehokders of the party must be accountable to its leadership and for the avoidance of any doubt, it must be stressed that the current flag bearer is seen and recognised by all as the authority with the greatest responsibility to direct the discourse of the dialogue and Tri-partite discourse. The members of the international community recognize Dr Samura Kamara as a key figure in these engagements andnso should all rank and file of the party. To the extent that any member of his team who engages or encourages an open campaign for any agenda other than what is on floor, the agreements of the dialogue and the outcome of the Tri-partite which were assured to be actionable and imolementable must ne allowed to reach their logical conclusions.
Having said this, loyalty to Dr Samura Kamara as a leading figure in all these discourse arising from the refusal to engage in governance when the results of the 2023 elections have not been wholeheartedly accepted by the Party, should not include the positioning of any other stakeholder as potential leadership material. Evidently, any such activity has to be seen as betrayal and to a large extent political suicide. Now is a time for us to put all hands on deck to see the dialogue and subsequently the Tri-partite through.
