The five years uninterrupted clause adopted in the new APC Constitution trailing Samuel Sam-Sumana out of the party’s presidential race ahead of 2023 elections may also haunt its 2018 presidential candidate, Dr. Samura Kamara who is desperately seeking a rerun.

Some advocates of Sam-Sumana have told The Satellite that through the notion behind the five years uninterrupted clause was to knock Sam-Sumana out of the race, they warned that it is highly likely to affect several aspiring candidates including Dr. Samura Kamara.

They argued that regardless of how it would be interpreted, it would prevent Dr. Samura Kamara from running for the presidential ticket for a second time, because according to them, he joined the party in 2017.

They said that prior to his handpicked selection as presidential candidate in 2017, few months to the 2018 general elections, by the party Chairman and Leader, Ernest Bai Koroma who was the country’s president at that time, he was not a member of the APC party.

They argued that even though Samura Kamara’s membership has never been interrupted, unlike Sam Sumana’s membership, whom his political detractors say had been interrupted due to is expulsion in 2015, the former will still be a victim of the 5 years membership clause, given the years he has spent in the party as a member.

When the new party constitution would have become law without any modification of the five years uninterrupted clause, and if Dr. Samura Kamara is reelected, they said, it will definitely open a floodgate of litigation for further interpretation of what they describe as an ambiguous clause.

With this ambiguous clause now subject to legal interpretation, many political pundits hold the view that Sam-Sumana’s hope of contesting the flagbearer race is finally crashed whatever way is it interpreted.

Their argument is that Sam-Sumana cannot be a member of two political parties at the same time because during his 5 years expulsion from the APC, he was a member of the Coalition For Change party under which he contested as a presidential candidate in the 2018 general elections, hence a clear interruption of his membership.