Charles Margai’s Business in Politics is Over

Charles Margai

The Leader of the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), Charles Francis Margai is shamelessly holding on to his political career, despite the fact that he no longer has any business in politics. What a man that refuses to honorably take a bow from politics and pursue his legal profession?

During the height of the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections, Charles Margai, who had teamed up with the All People’s Congress (APC) party, vowed to quit politics if the APC fails to positively turn the country around. Margai convinced the citizens, especially his PMDC supporters that the APC had all it takes to bring development to a deprived country like Sierra Leone. It is therefore an indisputable fact that Charles Margai and his PMDC party contributed significantly towards the 2007 victory of Ernest Bai Koroma’s led APC party.

Few years down the line, the same Charles Margai, who had vowed to end his political career (including his dream of one day becoming President of Sierra Leone) if the APC fails, is the same person that is now rating the APC government as the worst in the history of Sierra Leone.

I never believed it when I was first told some few months back that Charles Margai had made public somewhere that the APC has failed, until the just concluded delegates’ conference of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party.

It was stunning to hear Charles Margai announcing that the APC has failed woefully. He went further to say the APC is ranked zero percent as far as development is concerned.

After these assertions, I was expecting the PMDC leader to further make true his 2007 vow by announcing that he was quitting politics as a result of the failure of the APC. That would have placed his name in the annals of Sierra Leone as the most honest politician that ever lived in Sierra Leone. But he never did. Instead, he went further to make shameless comments that have now landed him in hot waters with his PMDC members. Rather than announcing his quit from politics, he spoke of the possibility of teaming up with the SLPP to chase the APC from power. I only pray Charles Margai must have been joking to assure of such possibility at a time like this when no serious-minded person takes him seriously. If he was really serious, then it justifies his dictatorial tendencies and dishonesty, because he now stands accused by his PMDC members that his utterances were unilateral and does not represent a PMDC position.

Charles Margai has nobody to blame for the present state of confusion he finds himself. I am pretty much sure that Margai must have regretted the day he staked his political career for the APC. The day he vowed to quit politics if the APC fails was the day Margai started his journey to the end of his presidential ambition. And his journey from serious politics ends the day he announced that APC has failed woefully.

In short, Charles Margai has knocked himself out of politics. He is therefore advised to do the honourable thing – quit politics and go to the court room – because his business in politics is over.   

By Abdul Fonti