The Chairman and Leader of the main opposition All people’s Congress (APC), former President Ernest Bai Koroma, whilst paying tribute to the Late Comrade Martin Bash Kamara recently, said that the party will bounce back into governance in 2023 and statement witnessed a loud applause from the audience.

In order for this to happen however, he stated, it is the responsibility of everybody to come together. “We owe it to the people of Sierra Leone,” the Chairman and Leader said.

Ernest appealed that this is not the time for the party to be divided, expose itself and resort to institutions where they would not get justice. He repeated the statement he made earlier that it is not the courts that should decide issues having to do with the party.

Issues having to do with the party, he reiterated, should be dealt with by members of the party. He disclosed there are ongoing moves by different stakeholders and structures of the party to bring everybody together, maintaining that the party should come together.

Nobody, he said, should think that the party is on the brink of collapse, stressing that the party will emerge stronger from the crisis it is going through. By the end of the year, he predicted, the party would have a new Constitution, a new leadership and the flagbearer for the 2023 presidential election who, he said, everybody must support.

Ernest maintained that his conscience is clear and that the party’s conscience is clear that nobody has been wronged. He called on members to stop exposing the party in order not to give weapon to opposite political parties.

Martin Bash Kamara, he said, fought a good fight, noting that his works and sacrifice for the part will be remembered. He called for prayers for inspiration so that peace will reign in the country. The suffering of comrades of the party that are inside and outside the country, he furthered, will not go in vain. APC, he said, will bounce back in 2023, adding that it will elect a flagbearer that will unify the party to make Sierra Leone a better country.

Earlier, Ernest called on members not to shy away from the party and not to be intimidated. “We are proud as APC members,” he said. He recalled the party’s journey from 2002 to 2007 and from 2007 to 2018 when the party was in opposition and in governance respectively. The people, he said, have seen the difference. “We are yet to see anything that this government has done, even its flagship programme, Free Quality Education,” he said.