It is an open secret that there is a titanic struggle for power going on inside the main opposition All People’s Congress between the old guards led by the party Chairman and Leader, former President Koroma, his Vice Minkailu Mansaray, Secretary General Osman Yansaneh, the entire national executive officers including all constituency, district and regional chairmen, and the reformers.

The old guards, if they have their way, would want the party’s 2018 presidential flagbearer Samura Kamara to retain the position for 2023.

Whereas, the party’s young generation of reformers led by the National Reformation Movement insist that the old guards must first democratize the party including giving up selection for elections before giving up selection for elections before giving way to a new generation leader.

The struggle puts the planned candidacy of Samura Kamara for the party’s 2023 flagbearer position in an uncertain position.

Already, it is known that a group of the party’s 2018 flagbearer aspirants have come together to form the Big Six with the intention of putting up a popular consensus candidate against Samura Kamara who they think dances to the tune of the party chairman and leader and his national executive.

The reformists who have fought successfully for the party constitution to the democratized have also won a first-round victory at the High Court when they got a ruling ordering the party to hold an Emergency National Delegates Conference by August 24, 2021 to adopt the new constitution; with the provision that the chairman and leader and his national officers should not take part in the process but only facilitate it.

A doyen of the party, Dr. Abdulai O. Conteh has been selected to head a Council of thirty-five Elders that will head the party in interim until the NDC and conventions leading to the election of new national executive officers is done. They have been refused entry into the party’s national headquarters, allegedly on the orders of the secretary general, to hold meetings.