The maverick leader of the People’s Movement for Democratic Change has apologised to the people of Bo district for endorsing Ernest Bai Koroma in 2007 during the run-off presidential election.
That singular endorsement by Charles Margai proved decisive in electing the leader of the then opposition All People’s Congress party as president of Sierra Leone. Such was the camaraderie between the two that at a subsequent convention of his party in the eastern town of Kenema, Margai even likened president Koroma to the biblical Moses sent to redeem his people. But, speaking to Politico, PMDC Secretary General, Eric Aiah Jabba, said that during a 6-day tour of Bo District, Mr Margai told the people that he was sorry for calling on them to elect a man he described as a “failed president” whom he said had failed to deliver for the people, calling him “a tribalist” whose appointments he said bordered on ethnicity. Margai reportedly said that when he decided to endorse Mr Koroma in 2007 it was with a view to diminishing tribalism in the country but thundered that there was more tribalism today than at any other time in the country’s recent history. Jabba said the tour took them to the Mongere, Tikonko, Koribondo and Jerehun axis, promising that they intended to visit all districts in the country ahead of their party conference. He would not say when or where that conference would happen but suggested Bo as a possible venue and that August was being touted as the month but was not more specific. Reacting to the allegations, the Secretary General of the APC party, Victor Foh dismissed them as “ridiculous” and “false”. He said much as Margai had the right to express his opinion he was “in fact the biggest tribalist in the country”. Foh said he is Mende and that he would not be serving as Secretary General of his party if the president who comes from the north was a tribalist. “What is Margai apologising for?” Foh asked. “Is he saying he is growing only now”, he rhetorically quizzed, adding that only “faint-minded” people could take in such an apology. He attributed the salvoes of Mr Margai to the outset of political campaigning. “I don’t believe it came from the heart, or mind…[He is] playing to the political gallery…[because] he has lost every right-thinking member of his party to whom he must apologise”, Foh went on. On Margai’s assertion that the Koroma administration had failed, the APC scribe said the greater number of the population appreciated the strides taken by the president and his government in the areas of electricity, infrastructure and health. “The president is doing well and only power hungry people cannot see that less women die now from giving birth” Foh said adding, “There are roads being built everywhere in the country”.
