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A Sierra Leonean court sparked a deep political crisis following the cancellation of the election of key opposition lawmakers.
A decision of the Sierra Leone Supreme Court overturned the election of 10 opposition MPs for alleged violation of the electoral law during the March 2018 legislative elections.
The verdict meant that nine deputies elected under the banner of the main opposition party, the Peoples Congress, were to be immediately dismissed and replaced by candidates from the ruling Sierra Leonean People's Party.
Selective justice?
The ruling helped the ruling SLPP regain a majority of one seat in the chamber (58 versus 57 for the opposition APC), pushing disqualified MPs to barricade themselves in their offices while their supporters collided. to the police in the capital Freetown.
"The police came to disperse these people, she became violent and had to fire tear gas into the parliament building," recalls Amadu Lamrana Bah, deputy editor of Freetown's African Young Voices press group.
Bah told RFI that more than a hundred people, including former ministers and a deputy in office, arrested because of the violence, had been released on bail and that 38 of them they had been charged.
While civil rights advocates have called for an independent investigation into political violence, AYV's editor-in-chief announced that a controversy over fake blood had turned on social media after a spirit malicious had tried to discredit complaints lodged by people injured by the police.
Judicial system manipulated?
The High Court verdict, issued more than a year after the 2018 elections, prompted stakeholders to shout. Some observers believe that the decision is not part of the court's mandate, but is the latest evidence of the continued manipulation of the judiciary by President Bio's government.
L & # 39; influence Cocorioco The paper also criticizes a project by President Bio's government aimed at "deliberately and systematically eliminating members of certain Sierra Leonean tribes as well as key positions in the civil service and government institutions".
"Jobnocide"
The publication cites the recent dismissal of members of the Commission on Human Rights and their replacement by members of the Mende de Bio tribe, as an example of the so-called "jobnocide" in progress.
While waiting Patriotic vanguard reports that President Bio is in London to attend a conference with Sierra Leonean investors.
But according to the Telegraph the journey comes at a time when honest investors in the field are packing and leaving because of corruption and weak legality.
"24th province of China"
Analysts point to the "opaque" conditions in which Sierra Leone's largest iron ore mining company, African Minerals Limited, was sold to Chinese company Shandong Iron and Steel, demonstrating that the interests of people in power in Freetown agree perfectly with those of the Beijing industrial cartel ".
China's economic interests in Sierra Leone have increased by more than 400 percent in the last five years, prompting Sierra Leoneans to call their country on 24th province of China, according to the Telegraph.
"How much does the public know what our country is committed to?" Asks Femi Claudius, leader of the new Sierra Leonean Unity Party, in an exclusive interview with RFI Freetown .
"I hope we will not mortgage one colonial master to another," warned Claudius-Cole, the first Sierra Leonean woman to create a political position in presidential elections in her country.
Although it has huge deposits of minerals and diamonds, Sierra Leone remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
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