The weekend of 27 November 2021 has been engraved on the annals of political history of Sierra Leone as the day when the Women’s Council of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) demonstrated the true colour of the party in relation to electoral malpractices and violence on polling day.

Similarly on Friday 26 November the SLPP Young Generation election was almost interrupted due to the misconduct of unruly party boys who have had to hear the loud and heavy voice of their leader, President Julius Maada Bio, who charged out heavily that the rude boys be taken out of the hall. The process would have been interrupted although he later called them to participate in the YG election. Yet indiscipline seems largely affecting the internal governance of the SLPP as was last weekend clearly manifested at the Women’s leader elections in Kailahun.

The day in question was actually set aside by the party executive for the election of the SLPP Women’s leader, in a very democratic manner though it was sadly marred by violence allegedly precipitated via the interference and manipulations of top executive members with no exemption of SLPP’s most powerful woman on earth, the First Lady, Fatima Maada Bio, and her operatives from downtown Freetown.

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Naming, shaming, attacks and counterattacks characterized last weekend SLPP Women’s leader elections in Kailahun, to an extent that the wife of the party leader, Mrs. Fatima Bio, had to be sneaked out of the venue by her personal security guards from among the angry crowd of embittered party women and other members as well as supporters of the most popular candidate in the contest, Fatmata Sawaneh.

The First Lady left her stooges – the SLPP National Secretary General, Umaru Napoleon Koroma – heavily knocked in his head with a wooden chair, whilst embattled Chairman Dr. Prince Alex Harding stood there in the hall badly confused and worried about his personal safety, having received misguided directives from President Bio’s wife Fatima to manipulate the outcome of the elections in favour of Hawa Foray.

What was expected to be completely democratic couldn’t hold at all due to vote buying by Madam Fatima Bio at four hundred United States Dollars equivalent to Four Million Leones from delegates in a bid to mobilize large support for her favourite candidate Hawa Foray.

Her imposing influences reportedly ignited the confusion, leading to the cancellation and relocation of the election in the capital city of Freetown, probably this time around under the watch of party leader President Bio.

Reason being that the party’s Women’s Council elections held in Kailahun ended up in fiasco and turmoil due to suspicions of several electoral malpractices discovered from the part of the president’s wife, Fatima Bio.

An unprecedented act that continues to earn President Bio so much criticism especially for his failures to firmly punctuate the situation from that aspect of his spouse’s involvement in the electoral process that raised the suspicion from among party women and the entire membership across the globe.

According to reports that emanated from that delegate elections, the incumbent SLPP Women’s Leader Fatmata Sawaneh and contenders Hawa Foray and others went haywire after it was sensed that the voting process had been infiltrated and bastardised with all sorts of fraudulent acts, vote buying, vote rigging and other electoral malpractices allegedly midwifed by Fatima Bio.

A key figure alleged to have been responsible for what went wrong and led to the cancellation of that election is First Lady Fatima Bio, who is accused of wanting to use her influence to dictate and determine the outcome of the election against the wishes and aspirations of the general SLPP membership.

She was therefore meted with harsh molestation and rude comments from mostly female party members and delegates at the voting ground and from the SLPP diaspora chapters around the world.

As a result of the unprecedented act, the political miasma of the influential First Lady Fatima Bio has spattered the parlour and inner floors of not only the confines of the ruling SLPP but also the corridors of the powers that be and the land of Sierra Leone.

All could attest to the fact that the First Lady Mrs. Bio has been a thorn in the flesh of not only the SLPP and the Bio-led government but also of the nation called Sierra Leone.

Her jibes on social media, her strong meddling in the affairs of state, her ignoble remarks and hints to the nation and the manner in which she expends monies from the national coffers and of late how her son demoralises Sierra Leoneans and the state of Sierra Leone by flashing bundles and heaps of foreign currencies that could be amounted to tens of thousands of dollars and pound sterling at the faces of Sierra Leoneans via the social media are serious causes for concern as regards the mannerism of the First Lady.

Moreover, Mrs. Fatima Bio has continued to demonstrate her true nature of unreasonable attitude in the social and political domain of Sierra Leone, at the anger of so many SLPP members and other well-meaning Sierra Leoneans, with the belief that the president’s wife is not presidential at all, thus she is unfit for the purpose.

Forum News reported that, the SLPP Women’s Council election also exposes the hand of SLPP in the well of electoral fraud, violence and undemocratic nature in the body politics of the country. With such conduct of a ruling party which is on the back of its political opponent for undemocratic blunders is seeing the exact opposite of what it is crucifying the main opposition All People Congress – APC for.

Further, angry reactions after the other from the SLPP around the globe range from social media protests of taking back the SLPP party from President Bio and his wife – the thorn in his flesh – to a complete bask in regrets for even voting Julius Maada Bio as President of the country to what good number of party members referred to as a mere hijacked leadership of the party.

Another SLPP diaspora member Lance Amara blamed Chairman Dr. Harding and Secretary General Umaru Napoleon Koroma for selling their souls to Fatima Bio. Amara also blamed Dr. Harding for dragging the SLPP into more controversy as what was manifested in Kailahun, adding that Dr. Harding does not deserve the leadership and the respect of the SLPP membership.

He suggested that both Dr. Harding and Koroma should take the back seats and do the party favour to resign peacefully as they have no chance of further destroying the SLPP. The SLPP North America chapter members said for Fatima she has done her part; it is now left with the party members to do theirs.

Another angry SLPP member unnamed said in the social media that “Hawa Foray does not deserve to lead the Women’s council of the party as she is not up to the task of the power”. The male voice called on President Bio to sit his wife down and explain the history of SLPP to her so that she can stay put instead of keeping on flouting procedures in the party, adding that they would let President Bio know that his wife is undermining the SLPP. He said if the president failed to do otherwise they would join Fatima to undermine the re-election of President Bio.