By Kelvin Jay
During an interactive session held at the American University in Washington DC on Friday 15th September, President Bio had played the ‘mind game’ tactics by accusing the United States of pressuring him to interfere with the June 24 elections count.
While answering to questions posed to him about the credibility of the June 24 Polls, President Bio pointed accusing fingers on the United States for interfering in the June 24 elections.
According to him, “When Electoral Commission was at the height of calling the results after doing their calculations, collation, and the processes…. I was requested by the United States to stop ECSL from calling the results but I declined…This is where the problem all started”, the President said.
ECSL, the President said, is a semi-autonomous body mandated by law to conduct all elections in Sierra Leone and that the law gives the Commission the ultimate power to announce election results after elections count.
“ECSL is a semiautonomous body… I have never called this institution to dictate to them what to do and I am not going to call them now”, says Bio after declining the U.S request.
Bio was re-elected in a disputed vote criticized by both the Opposition APC and International observers.
In a joint statement issued after the pronouncement of the election results, the United States, European Union, France, Germany, Ireland shared their concerns about “the lack of transparency in the tabulation of the results”.
A day after that, the United States also shared their concerns over the irregularities of the June 24 elections and called for the needful to be done, a position that resonate with other International Organizations.
Being the frontrunner of liberal Democracy, the United States also called on the Government of Sierra Leone to set up a special investigative Committee and appoint outsider independent investigator to look at the irregularities of the June 24 polls.
This call has not been heeded to by the Government of SierraLeone which led the U.S Government on August 31 to slam visa restrictions on those “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining democracy in SierraLeone”, including through vote rigging or intimidation of election observers. The names of those targeted were not made public because visa decisions are confidential under the U.S law.
Sounding the opinion of a seasoned diplomat about the recent outburst of President Bio; he criticized the President utterances and described it as a “mind game” tactics aiming to give false impression.
In his view, the United States being the architect of Democracy can’t allow to see Democracy going down the drain in any democratic states, but would prevail on Democratic leaders to respect and uphold the principles of Democracy.
