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Kangbai's Beef

Was Cocaine Cash Used To Fund APC's Victory?

unmasking the $145,000 origin

In December 2008, according to the well reputable American Christian Science Monitor newspaper, it was alleged that, cocaine money may have tainted the last Presidential elections in Ghana which saw the opposition National Democratic Congress party NDC of Prof. John Atta Mills winning the elections after a considerable long period of political hybernation. Similar elections pattern evolved in Guinea Bissau, which is currently being described these days as the major West African hub for hard drugs trafficking. Was the same pattern to obtain elections victory emulated in the last Presidential and Parliamentry elections in Sierra Leone which saw the then opposition All Peoples Congress APC coming to power in 2007?

Whooping

It was breath taking as well as asthmatic. A whooping one hundred and forty thousand United States dollars given to Charles Margai for run-off election alone? The Margai's disclosure sounds very interesting: the timing, the crowd and even environment where the revelation was made one believes was purposeful and symbolic. Why should the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change's (PMDC) leader chose his political party's national convention to make such revelation in front of Sierra Leone's two main political protagonists definitely has very deep undertones. Margai has just exhibited one of his true crafty nature-exposing and ridiculing political parties in the presence of their leaders.

Idolized

For many people who those years had taken Margai's lofty political ambition to citadel level, one fears whether their opinion for the PMDC man will remain the same. For many, Margai has ceased to be that personality whom they had initially idolized. One hundred and forty five thousand dollars for run-off elections alone, one could still hear himself asking over and over again as the news make runs that ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) party had indeed engaged in vote buying in order to secure the position in which they find themselves in today. There will be few justifications for the use of the term vote buying below.

Prosecutable

What will be the general perspective to the vote bribery still awaits the minds of Sierra Leone's political battlefield watchers. Also, in spite of this, one still wonders how many politically mature Sierra Leoneans these days know that vote buying is a crime which is prosecutable in any electoral court. It is part of what is generally referred to as electoral fraud. Electoral fraud refers to those illegal interferences with the process of an election.

Acts Of Fraud

These illegal interferences tend to involve everything illegal including manipulating voters' votes that are being counted, bribing election officers, intimidation, harassment, libeling etc. For now let's take a closer look at Margai's $145,000 APC's gift revelation in Kenema during the PMDC convention and question whether the APC offer could be described as illegal or legal.

International Observers

To determine the legality of the APC offer, it will be prudent if we take a closer look at places where vote buying had surfaced, legally documented, condemned and was the general perception international observers had about the practice. As recent as in June 2009, in Bulgaria's European Parliament elections, Volen Siderov, the leader of the ultra-nationalist party ATAKA, claimed that the Rights and Freedoms Party of Ahmed Dogan was engaged in massive vote buying exercise when ATAKA aligned itself with the other minor political parties and offered them huge sums of money in order to canvass their supporters in their favor. Close to 70 allegations of vote-buying was received on June 7 this year and each was being investigated, with nine pre-trial proceedings currently underway.

Kyrgyzstan

In another eastern European country; Kyrgyzstan, the organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, (OSCE), said that, the country's last Presidential elections were overshadowed by widespread irregularities including that of vote buying to ensure victory for the incumbent leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev. According to OSCE's 280 observers who monitored the last Kyrgyzstan poll, the Presidential election did not meet "key international standards".

Serious Allegation

From the above, it is quite clear now that vote buying is indeed an electoral crime which violates international elections standard. Thus, if the PMDC leader is today coming out in the open to acknowledge that the ruling All Peoples Congress APC indeed 'bribed' them to cast their votes in favor of the now ruling party then, it is a serious allegation which should warrant the investigation of our local electoral court.

Securing Votes

Also, let's start with the origin of the $145,000 which, according to Margai, was disbursed to various PMDC senior officials for canvassing their various constituencies on behalf of the APC prior to the run off election in 2007. Let's get one thing vividly clear here that PMDC was not in the race for the run off election that year. Only APC and the Sierra Leone Peoples Party SLPP were. That said, the money which PMDC disbursed was not theirs and in fact there is no reason why it should be theirs simple. They don't have anything at stake in the run off elections. Another point worth noting here also is the fact that had the Margai revelation that not surfaced one would have concluded that PMDC voters voted for the APC simply because the now ruling party was a better choice compared with the SLPP.

Spanning

But now we know it was not that way-money indeed changed hands. And it all started way in July 2007, spanning to August when APC threw a birthday party bash for Margai. Margai was born August 19, 1945. Remember the lousy interview over BBC in 2007 during Margai's birthday? But the more puzzling angle to the $145,000 question is: where the hell did the APC opposition party at that time obtain the money from. One is not underestimating the earning capacity of the former APC members especially those living in the diaspora to raise funds for their party, but for a political party that has been in the political wilderness for close to two decades to throw away $145,000 raises more air of suspicion than one can imagine.

Cocaine Connection

One key area to have come under high level of suspicion and which has been connected to the funding of the ruling party past political adventurism is drugs. It is not clear yet how drugs may have influenced the outcome of Sierra Leone's last Presidential and Parliamentary elections but with the recent busting of a cocaine syndicate in the country wherein foreign players, highly placed ruling APC party officials were prosecuted and subsequently jailed and fined early this year, it is highly probable that drugs money may have find its way into financing the last elections.

International Investigators

Already, an international consortium of international investigators are probing the angle of Sierra Leone political party elections financing with the aim of connecting recent upsurge in hard drugs shipment to Sierra Leone to the ascension to power by the ruling APC party. The first round Presidential and Parliamentary elections as well as that of the run off, saw a surge in political violence across the Country. Think about it!