When talk of party unity become a tactile activity within any gathering of political ideologues, it becomes clear that the foundational principles may have escaped the immediate concern of major players.

It is a well known fact that the determinants of unity within the political sphere are driven by a shared ideology combined with a full grasp of exigent political considerations. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Yet the allure of absolute power is inexorably what drives political leadership to excess.

The APC is at the cusp of a unique turning point that has been driven unparrallel vigour and the vision of the party leader who accepted the challenge to lay down the gauntlet againat a violent and brutal opponent in the political field.

In the vexatious morass that gripped the party after the last general and Presidential elections of 2023 in Sierra Leone, the decision to boycott all governance arenas was as much inspirational as it was eclectic. Not many would have predicted the outcomes of that unitary action but the leadership of the Party at the time showed a gutsy determination which left even the elusive international community befuddled and taken by surprise. The permutations of scenarios became too dynamic for anyone to pin down a clear progression to normalcy. The APC had a genuine reason to be annoyed because the elections were not only rigged but the mandate of the people were outrightly stolen. In the dash for internal consolidation of power that was clearly dysfunctional, the government was pushed to broker deals that were devised to appease rather than address the root cause of the disaffection. The reluctance of the international development partners to accept what they also accepted to have been a flawed election process galvanized action that has now resulted in opening a dialogue intended to avert a backslide into another civil war.

Political observers were aso loathed to encourage another breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of the polls and therefore a rushed attempt to broker a settlement became inevitable.

The intervention therefore of the International Community under the UN banner was seen as a preemptive move to avert conflict rather than creating an environment for peacekeeping. The Commonwealth Secretariat was instructive in brokering a regional yet multinational supervision of the process given the already expressed settee rumination for peace consolidation within the Sahel region, which incidentally has now flared and the proliferation of Military takeovers all around makes this a more volatile political space.

The Sierra Leone experience of war tells of conflict in its bitterest form and a display of barbarism never before unleashed on the African soil. The need therefore to avert conflict or instability was an imminent objective. The question now is what chances are there to maintain civility and to reject any further potential for civil strife.

These concerns should be of primal import to the on going discourse and the Tri-partite committee that is now engaged with the task of unravelling the conduct of the election of 2023.

While it would be arcane to guess the outcome of the Tri-partite committee, one thing that is sure is the fact that there deliberations will result in the establishment of a framework that would guarantee that nothing of the sort of wholescale electoral theft would never happen and to the extent that the next elections in Sierra Leone would be supervised. In that case, the APC will now stand a clear chance of winning on a level playing field.

In the event that the conditions are ripe for an APC victory, the challenge would shift to overcoming the present dash for position and the insular behavior of the party ‘s stakeholders. Do we allow decorum to prevail or is there going to be an all out war of prevarication and a scramble for leadership that would engulf the good and the faithful? The advice that ia prevailing is for concerted efforts on the part of the stakeholders to focus on winning power rather than on winning influence. What ia certain is that going in as an uncumbent government, the SLPP will not be so pristine as to allow infighting to scupper their chances, and inevitably, what would happen if it is Maada Bio who is their flag bearer, would he give up power without a fight?