The United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone has called on the ruling Sierra Leone’s Peoples Party to do a “full and rapid” implementation of the Bintumani Peace Dialogue Agreement signed with the main Opposition All Peoples Congress (APC).
Ambassador Bryan David Hunt’s comments came in a tweet on Tuesday 24thOctober during a visit to the SLPP Party Headquarters in Freetown where he paid courtesy call and addressed the leadership of the party.
The SLPP is one of the two main political parties in Sierra Leone that contested the June 24thelections and was announced to have won the polls in a controversial outcome that provoked a reaction from the APC. And so it’s a party to the conflict that was recently deliberated at the peace dialogue held between 16th– 18th October 2023 at Hotel Bintumani, Aberdeen, West of Freetown.
It would be recalled that the country came to a standstill since the end of the 24th June 2023 disputed elections when the APC allegedly accused the SLPP of rigging and stealing them fraudulently, claims that the ruling party have denied. The development further degenerated to a political and diplomatic crisis by the APC refusing to participate in governance while the international community threatened to punish the Freetown Government of President Bio with sanctions.
The depth of the crisis was intervened by the Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion (ICPNC), and with the help of the African Union, ECOWAS and European Union it led to the Bintumani Peace Dialogue between APC and SLPP.
Now the moral guarantors of the Peace Dialogue have started following up with the ruling party to ensure that it fully and immediately implements the dictates of the agreement in full.
Reacting to the US Ambassador’s tweet, several citizens on social media have welcomed it as timely in order to keep in check the government’s commitment. Ambassador Hunt did not put pressure on the government but wanted it to know that it was following them through and would encourage them to cooperate further with the agreement.
There are no reactions yet from the main opposition APC but it is expected that the party’s position may not be too different from the US Ambassador’s.
