Is Samara Kamara, the presidential candidate of the main opposition party in Sierra Leone, the All People’s Congress (APC), an indecent man, or, politically-childish – in spite of his doctorate degree in Economics which his adoring followers like to flaunt (“Dr’. Samura Kamara) on posters and banners; in spite of his about fifty years professional experience – as finance minister in the NPRC government that then Brigadier Maada Bio was Head of State for in 1996; governor of our central bank, finance minister, foreign affairs minister in the government of former President Ernest Bai Koroma (APC) between 2007 and 2017; Financial Secretary in the SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah, 2002 to 2007; and having worked in international organizations like the Commonwealth? Let us canoe across the pond to a scenario of politically decency in the United States.

”Just a month before the 2008 presidential election, Sen. John McCain (Republican presidential candidate) took a political risk to defend his opponent, then-Sen. Barack Obama (​Democratic party presidential candidate). During an October 10, 2008, town hall event in Lakeville, Minnesota, a constituent told McCain: “.. I CAN’T trust OBAMA. HE’S AN ARAB”.
Senator John McCain (John Sidney McCain III [August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018], whose father was a decorated Admiral in the US navy, who was an American politician who served as US Senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018; who was a US naval officer who was captured by the enemy during the Vietnam War in the 1970s, tortured, but never gave in, winning the admiration of even the Vietnamese) took the microphone from the white woman who had called Barrack Obama an “Arab”, and said: “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.” There was wild applause for the sublime decency of McCain. ….The Associated Press called it a “reflection of [McCain’s] thinking that partisans should disagree without demonizing each other,” and the Washington Post named it one of McCain’s most courageous political moments. (SOURCE: John McCain defended Barack Obama as ‘decent family man’ on 2008 campaign trail – ABC7 Chicago).

Let us take a jet plane back across the Atlantic Ocean to Sierra Leone. Compare Senator John McCain and Dr. Samura Kamara. Over the past five years since he lost the 2018 presidential election, there has been intense and relentless demonization on social media of the President, Retired Brigadier Maada Bio (SLPP), as a “junta leader” (and much worse words), and the Mende-speaking Southeasterners would be stigmatized as “Mendecrats”; with social media terrorists threatening to commit genocide on all Mende-speaking people, or, less, sack them from their public sector jobs when the APC regains power. That evoked images of what Hutu extremists said on radio about the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda before the 1994 genocide in which Hutu extremists bludgeoned and hacked to death almost a million Tutsis in a nine months holocaust. What has “Dr.” Samura Kamara said in five years to that steady stream of hate speech targeting one of the two largest tribes in Sierra Leone, a tribe on, and in, whose traditional lands nearly all the country’s mineral wealth of gold, diamonds, rutile, bauxite, cocoa, coffee are found?

Only about 6 months to presidential election, Samura Kamara said that his wife is a Mende woman from Pujehun, and he wouldn’t hate Mendes. Too late. The poison had already been injected into minds, and Samura Kamara’s own utterance which has gone viral has not helped.

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Samura Kamara was videoed talking a year ago among some muscular youth saying: “If you are Kamara or Koroma or Kargbo, you won’t get a job in this country” in the Bio Administration. In those words, Samura Kamara stoked the flames of tribal/regional rivalry to fever pitch – as the names aforementioned are traditional names of Temne-speaking Northwest peoples, the principal political rivals of the Southeastern people. Samura Kamara aimed to unite all Northerners and Temne-speaking people in the Western Area against Mende-speaking people in the Southeast. He presented himself as a WARLORD out to mobilize his tribe/region against the enemy. He clearly did not succeed in uniting Northerners, because the SLPP Leader, President Bio, has been making considerable inroads into the Northern Province by appointing into his government significant number of people from the Northwest; so much so that one can hazard an about 35% average strength of votes for the SLPP in the Northern Province, whereas, the fear that Samura Kamara has injected into Southeasterners with his support for genocidal intent has united Southeasterners as never before. Samura Kamara would be lucky to win an average of 4% votes in the Southeast in the June 24, 2023 presidential election – and there are reports that Samura Kamara has been even afraid to travel to most Southeastern districts to campaign. Dangerously shameful.

*How can a man aspiring to be the national leader of a tiny country like Sierra Leone start off by presenting himself like a tribal warlord?*
Our culture does not allow us to do a survey of university graduates, and professionals, based on their region or tribe. But, I can hazard a guess by saying that with the Southeastern Mende-speaking bloc being a full half of the population of our country, the Mende-speaking people could comprise about 75% of university educated persons, and about 85% of professionals in spheres like engineering, medicine, information technology, scientific agriculturists, university lecturers in the sciences. Over 95% of Sierra Leone’s GNP are gotten from the export of its mineral resources like iron ore, rutile, bauxite, gold, diamonds; cocoa, coffee – and over 70% of these natural resources are located in the Southeast, include the sea-face ocean territorial space. How can Samura Kamara with his about 50 years professional experience dare to antagonize Southeasterners whose support he must have to win the presidency?

Why did Samura Kamara as Leader of the APC, and presidential candidate, not stamp his foot down against the APC electing a national executive with only ONE Southeasterner, Yaya Tunis, whose political clout in his native Pujehun is ludicrously non-existent!!? The tribal/regional executive of the APC that aspires for national leadership!!

That is why I say that Samura Kamara is indecent. And childish. And dangerous!! He may be a wizard in juggling accounting figures, and spouting economic theories, but, as a politician, he is hardly different from the child combatants of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during our civil war years between 1991 and 2002. ​Reject Samura Kamara for his implicit war intentions. After our recent experience of one of the most brutal and nastiest civil wars in modern human history, between 1991 and 2002, we must found reprehensible any political leader that expressly or intrinsically wants to catalyze a civil war in Sierra Leone.

I pause,
Oswald Hanciles, The Guru
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