|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: A popular All People’s Congress (APC) politician claimed stakeholders agreed to a 10-year term for Sierra Leone’s presidency between APC and SLPP to prevent another war.
Verdict: Misleading! Although Sierra Leone’s ex-democratic presidents ruled for ten years each, the 1991 Constitution only specifies a five-year term for the country’s presidency. Additionally, the review of the 1999 Lomé Peace Agreement and other peace agreements revealed that there is no 10-year agreement for the presidency between the APC and SLPP.
Full Text
The 1999 Lomé Peace Agreement was a power-sharing agreement between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) aimed at ending the Sierra Leone Civil War.
The agreement encompassed key provisions, including the integration of RUF members into the government, a ceasefire, the establishment of commissions for disarmament, human rights, and reconciliation, the transformation of the RUF into a political party, and the restoration of democracy in the country.
However, the agreement did not live up to its fullest potential due to violations and difficulty disarming the RUF, which leveraged diamond wealth to continue the conflict.
According to Chatham House, Sierra Leone returned to democracy after the Lomé Peace Agreement was signed to end the 11-year civil war, achieved through a power-sharing agreement between the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
However, a popular APC politician, Wilfred Leeroy Kabs-Kanu, claimed that stakeholders who ended the 11-year civil war agreed to a 10-year term for Sierra Leone’s presidency between the APC and SLPP to prevent another war.
The claim reads in full: “Let us get it straight. The 10-year-each rule arrangement did not come from the UN. Rather, stakeholders who worked to end the 11-year civil war arranged it. Their rationale was that if SLPP and APC had the chance to rule, there would be no more war.”
The claim sparked controversies, with some commenters dismissing it as unconstitutional.
DUBAWA decided to fact-check the claim in a bid to determine the claim’s veracity.
Verification
DUBAWA first contacted the claimant to provide evidence to the claim, but he did not respond.
Screenshot of the message sent to the claimant.
DUBAWA then reviewed the ECOWAS Six-Month Peace plan for Sierra Leone, which was adopted in Conakry, Guinea, between 1997 and 1998, but did not find any evidence supporting the claim.
For instance, we found that the main idea of the ECOWAS Six-Month Peace Plan was to devise an early return of constitutional governance to the country after fFormer President Ahmad Tejan Kabba’s government was ousted by erstwhile Major Johnny Paul Koromah’s coup.
The ECOWAS Six-Month Peace Plan was not specifically an agreement between the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party and All People’s Congress, but the government of Sierra Leone and Major Johnny Paul Koroma.
Secondly, we also reviewed the Abidjan Agreement of 1996, but found no evidence supporting the claim.
In fact, the Abidjan Agreement was between the government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). No part of the agreements, which were overseen by the United Nations, the Former President of Cote D’Ivoire, Henri Konan Bedie, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and the Commonwealth, stipulated that the SLPP and APC should rule on a 10-year term.
Furthermore, we reviewed the country’s most popular Lome Peace Agreement of 1999 to verify the claim, but found no Article that stipulated a ten-year rule each for the SLPP and APC.
For instance, we found that the Lomé Peace Agreement did not stipulate a ten-year rule for the SLPP and APC; instead, it established a four-year transitional government, primarily for power-sharing between the incumbent SLPP and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) until the next elections.
Although each of Sierra Leone’s democratically elected presidents, such as Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Bai Koroma, ruled for ten years, it is not a law or agreement that the country’s president should rule for ten years.
While Section 46 subsection (1) of the 1991 Constitution does not explicitly say that the SLPP and APC should rule for ten years each, the section says “no person shall hold office for more than five years, whether or not the terms are consecutive.”
In other words, each president is constitutionally expected to serve for a term of five years. And if an incumbent president deems it fit to run for a second term, the constitution allows him or her to do so, without specifying a ten-year term as claimed by Kabs-Kanu.
Conclusion
Although two of Sierra Leone’s former democratic presidents ruled for ten years each, there is no constitutional mandate for a ten-year term. There is also no evidence of such an agreement in the peace agreements led and signed by stakeholders aimed at restoring peace in the country and ending the war.
