By Joseph Lamin Kamara
Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella has pleaded for a level playing field as the contest for the presidential ticket of the main opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) intensifies.
Yumkella was expected to present his credentials to executive members of the SLPP this week, amidst widespread controversy over his membership in the party.
The former Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is faced with the task of clarifying whether he is a registered and paid-up member of the party whose ticket he intends to use to contest the next presidential election. He insists in an interview with Politico that he is a member and called for a level playing field in the pending party elections.
After a violence-laden courtesy visit to the SLPP headquarters in Freetown on Monday, Yumkella was expected the following day by the party executive members to present documentary evidence of his membership.
But SLPP’s Acting Secretary General Ambassador Alie Badara Kamara told Politico that the intending flagbearer candidate failed to do so and that his campaign team had assured that the documents would be presented on Wednesday – September, 26 – by their legal team. In the afternoon of the Wednesday, Ambassador Kamara told Politico that the KKY team had presented his credentials and the party executive was verifying them.
They were to decide at the end of the day on Yumkella`s fate, he said.
Both Yumkella and his campaign team say he carried his party membership card to the party headquarters on Monday and he showed it to executive members.
Yumkella’s membership in SLPP has been a huge issue among members of the party’s national executive. The party’s Secretary General Suleiman Banja Tejan-Sie, whose absence in his office has raised other issues, has asserted that the former UNIDO boss is a registered and paid-up member against refutations by the Acting Spokesperson Philip Tetema Tondoneh and Ambassador Alie Badara Kamara.
“We don’t have any records showing that he is a registered member here,” said Ambassador Kamara at his office earlier in the week, referring to Dr Yumkella.
“There is no record of his registration. As far as we are concerned Yumkella is a family member of SLPP. He is SLPP by birth,” said Tondoneh, at the party headquarters on Wallace Johnson Street.
The former member of parliament who took the post of Publicity Secretary of the party after the death of Musa Tamba-Sam, referred to an interview Yumkella had on the popular radio talk show programme ‘Monologue’, in 2013, in which “he came out succinctly that he had never registered as a member of the party and had never voted.”
Meanwhile, the former UNIDO boss, who also recently served as Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on sustainable energy, denied he is not registered with the party.
He also said that he had informed the party executive that he would “upgrade” his party status from “Grand Chief Patron to Distinguished Grand Chief Patron”.
“[I’m] a registered and a fully paid-up member,” he said by phone on Tuesday.
The former UN Secretary General Representative said he had registered in several regions of the party, in and out of the country, and he had registered in the country’s southern district of “Bo in August, 2013.”
But the Southern Regional Chairman Hon Edward Suluku told Politico that he was not aware of any document to prove Yumkella’s registration in the region.
“I’m not aware he registered with us,” he said.
Reacting to comments about his Monologue interview in 2013, Dr Yumkella denied ever talking about his party registration, but he confirmed he said he had never voted in the country.
“They deliberately changed what I said,” he claimed, adding that he had decided not to vote in the country because “I was protesting against one party system” in the regime of President Siaka Probyn Stevens, which spanned from 26 April, 1968 to 21April 19 71.
Yumkella spent almost two decades in international service, serving as the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on sustainable energy, after his tenure as UNIDO ended. He resigned his lucrative UN job only recently to return home. His supporters say to contest for the SLPP ticket.
KKY, as Yumkella is fondly called by his supporters, alleged that he had been told at their headquarters that the receipt book that would prove his membership payments had been lost.
“You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game,” said, urging the national executive to offer “level playing field” to all intending contestants.
Although both Ambassador Kamara and Tondoneh assured of an equal space for all intending contestants, the latter said he preferred Julius Maada Bio, former presidential candidate of the party, for the flagbearer post considering “the popularity” of the man, who scored about 37% in the last presidential poll.
The Acting Secretary General said Bio had “always stayed with and supported” the party, though he had lost earlier when he contested in 2005 in that year’s flagbearer race, and therefore he was easier to support.
“People want somebody they are comfortable with. Yumkella has never been an active party member,” he said.
Yumkella’s visit on Monday to the party headquarters saw violence mainly between his supporters and those of Bio.
Ambassador Fode Dabor, a coordinator of the KKY movement, says their supporters were blocked by members of Bio’s support team, which is described by opponents as ‘Pa-o-pa’, from entering the party headquarters. He said they however restrained their supporters from resorting to violence.
Meanwhile, Tondoneh and Ambassador Kamara claimed that most of the people who accompanied KKY were “not supporters of SLPP”, but hired youth.
Dr Yumkella expressed disappointment about the refusal to grant entry to “about a thousand of people” who he said were his supporters.
(C) Politico 26/08/15
