Sierra Leone News: “I have an unfinished business in UDM”- Mohamed Bangura
“I have an unfinished business in the party which is why I am going to contest for the Chairmanship position again,” Mr. Bangura declared.
The UDM holds its second National Delegates Assembly on Saturday, 10th May instant. The assembly he said will hold in Freetown, at Calaba Town and is expected to attract 26o delegates from across the country, the erstwhile Chairman and Leader revealed.
“I want a fresh mandate from my people to steer the ship of our party for the next two years,” he declared, noting that the party needs a “robust and charismatic leader” who can position the UDM as the much clamored for Third Force Party in Sierra Leone. “I can provide that leadership for the party and my people will repose that confidence in me,” he assured.
According to Mohamed Bangura, making a party prominent is not only limited to winning elections and forming a government. He maintains that it goes beyond that as it also requires shaping the national discuss, providing more leadership space to young people, promoting the participation of women in governance issues and to serve as a bridge for the people and provide alternative.
Bangura explained that so far the party has not received or heard of any other candidate that is interested in the position of chairman.
“I will be declared unopposed come 10th May 2014,” he further assured, noting that the UDM is a democratic party and every member has the right to run for any position he or she is qualified for.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bangura has stated that he detests politicians perpetuating themselves in power endlessly without going through the due process of a democratic election. “I will continue to contest for this position for a very long time to come until a fitting member defeats me a democratic election,” Mr. Bangura stated.
By Betty Milton
Wednesday May 07, 2014
The UDM Factor in Sierra Leone Politics
8 November 2011 at 01:09 |
Opinion
By Abdulai Bayraytay in Toronto.
Since the official registration of Sierra Leone’s nascent political party, the United Democratic Movement (UDM), few weeks ago by the Political Parties Registration Commission (PRRC), its founding member and leader, Mohamed Bangura, has increasingly come under scathing attacks from a cross section of both the electronic and print media.
The attacks have been consistent: Mohamed Bangura has just not only been referred to as loquacious and a protégé doing the dirty work of the ruling All Peoples’ Congress Party (APC) , (http://www.sierraleoneview.com/news135.html), a vain, opportunistic and embattled politician on the pay roll of President Ernest B. Koroma, (http://www.thenewpeople.com/front-page/item/1296-the-embattled-udm%E2%80%99s-mohamed-bangura), but, above all, as someone bent on denigrating no other person than the Executive Representative of the United Nation Secretary General (ERSG) Michael Van der Schulenburg, and raining consistent attacks, or rather invectives (my emphasis) on the newly elected flag bearer of the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), Julius Maada Bio.
While the above could be political actions on the personality of Mohamed Bangura as a strategy to discourage him from actively participating in the national politics of a country that he is a legitimate stake holder, yet there is another side of Mohamed that he has not trumpeted like other “loquacious’ politicians would have done.
Undoubtedly, Mohamed Bangura has immensely contributed to the sustenance of democracy and the fight against corruption as a young reporter with the now defunct New Breed newspaper. In 1993, for instance, as a journalist cum human rights campaigner, he was along with writers like Dr. Julius Spencer and Alie Bangura (erstwhile chief electoral commissioner of the SLPP and former High Commissioner to Ghana), among others, incarcerated at the maximum Pademba road Prisons in Freetown by the NPRC. Their crime then was for knowingly publishing a false article that accused the military NPRC boss of a 43 million dollar diamond deal. Critics of Mohamed Bangura then dismissed him as a mere young, novice journalist unnecessarily risking his life, and being used by his mentors whilst scores of his fans hailed him as a young man who would sacrifice his life for the general good of the country.
In spite of this, Mohamed Bangura did not budge down the road as he consistently held on to his incontrovertible belief that a country like Sierra Leone with a fledgling democracy could only thrive if certain people were (are) willing to sacrifice their lives for that cause.
True to his resolve, up to this day, Mohamed Bangura has never reneged in his campaign for human rights and the rule of law as he continues to galvanize the youth across the country from whom he largely draws most of his grassroots support to maintain that cause.
Even when he relocated to Canada in the late 1990s, his hardnosed stance that the worst civilian government could be better than the best military government made Mohamed Bangura an icon among his peers in Toronto as he mobilized his kith and kin in drawing the attention of the Canadian Federal Government and the rest of the international community to support the restoration of the ousted elected civilian erstwhile President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and his Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP) government to power following the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) coup of May, 1997.
So, would the theory hold water that the SLPP was using Mohamed just because his stance then clearly resonated with the interest of the latter?
Recognizing that Sierra Leoneans had fled the country to neighbouring countries including Liberia, the Gambia and Guinea and the horrendous life that was synonymous of refugees, Mohamed Bangura established the Sierra Leone-Canada Watch as a local non-governmental organization in direct response to the plight of his Sierra Leonean brothers and sisters living in the various refugee camps in the sub-region.
During that period, Mohamed would sacrifice his studies at York University in Toronto to visit Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea, Liberia and the Gambia with largesse in both kind and cash. As if that was not enough, Mohamed Bangura was able to persuade the Canadian Federal Government to grant his organization a sponsorship agreement holder status that saw the influx of Sierra Leonean refugees from the abysmal living conditions in the camps straight to the 58 Davelayne Road residence of Mohamed Bangura in Toronto without asking a dime for any payment of rent and utility bills.
The question then is, how many Sierra Leoneans in the Diaspora, especially during those trying times, would have opened their doors, clothed and fed them without making it to the press on how generous they had been for “rescuing” their kith and kin from refugee life in Africa?
This is where I found it very nauseating that one of those who joined the bandwagon in castigating Mohamed Bangura because his political views are not in sync with his was one of the very beneficiaries of Mohamed Bangura’s largesse!
This is where one finds it very disturbing that a leading political party would buy two hours of air time and spend all of that in not selling its agenda to the people to be voted into office in the forthcoming presidential and parliamentary polls, but rather wasted that time in berating the personality of Mohamed Bangura and in the process concocted the voice of Mohamed Bangura allegedly accepting $800,000 from President Koroma. What a philanthropist President Koroma was to have financed Charles Margai and his now politically superfluous PMDC party?
Through investigative journalism, one of Sierra Leone’s leading newspapers, the Awareness Times newspaper exonerated Mohamed as it turned out to be that the original recording has been ‘butchered” in a puerile attempt to present Mohamed Bangura as a political hustler. What a ricochet effect that was? (http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200518974.shtml).
The bottom line is, the political history of Sierra Leone in recent times cannot erase the fact that Mohamed Bangura was among the youngest to ever covet the position of national chairman of a then leading political party, the Peoples’ Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), and that he courageously challenged the dictatorial policies and Machiavellian tactics of its leader, Charles Margai, and resigned his position to the acclamation of lovers of democracy.
To criticize is human, but when such criticisms are ill-conceived to gain political points then the question that begs answers is when will critics of young enterprising leaders learn that had Mohamed Bangura been a bootlicker and a political opportunist, he would have been a yes man all the way and always at the disposal of Charles Margai just to preserve the status quo?.
Indeed, whilst politicians embark on winning votes, they should also be reminded that preposterously besmirching one’s personality for political gain is not just an anathema, but the fact that there is life after politics, and, above all, that there is indeed God overseeing man’s actions on earth be they on politics or otherwise!
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Salone News.
Mohamed Bangura Admits Making Switch to APC or SLPP.
By Ibrahim Samura,
On air, and in studios of radio 98.1, Mohamed Bangura, leader and chairman United Democratic Party, admits making switch to APC or SLPP should there be an opportunity.
He said the APC and SLPP are but the two main political parties, of course, possibly to be in governance forty years to come.
This he said is reason prompting him thinking make a switch to any of the two parties should need be.
Yesterday Wednesday 22nd, Mohamed surprisingly tendered his resignation letter, quitting the position as chairman All Political Parties Association (APPA), an institution he said he has served for over a year and months.
Mohamed’s resignation as chairman APPA, has sparked public debate, and has seen people now say it is because he has been promised ministerial appointment in the ruling APC.
It is true Mohamed was a presidential candidate in the 2012 elections, but at the eleventh hour switched loyalty to opponent President Koroma, then told his supporters not cast vote to his favour but the former (President Koroma) in his bid for second term.
Sources say Mohamed’s resignation as chairman APPA, is linked to alleged political switch to the ruling APC, where incidentally, though unconfirmed, he’s likely to be appointed minister of information.
His interview at radio 98.1 reveals clear that Mohamed is, but on his verge moving to either APC or SLPP, even though the suspicion is that he intends pitched fence with the ruling APC.
