He relies on fortune-telling ‘spiritualist' campaigners to interpret what they don't know and can only make comparison to the Liberian situation about George Weah losing to Johnson-Sirleaf in the run-off even though he had led in the first round, but they leave out the incomparison (the Queen will excuse my English) in the fact that Weah was not leading a ruling party that had been tested and proven and forsaken.

Political scientists generally agree that once a party has gone through this process, it will not recover in the short-run. Once the majority have made up their mind to change a government, the sky is their limit. Wittingly or unwittingly, the SLPP has been dealt a devastating blow for which no one wise enough would want to continue the fight. The end will be worse. But the SLPP's soothsaying propagandists only tell Berewa the sweet side of the story. That will only make Berewa want more, perhaps kill more.

They were the ones that told him to say to the BBC that there would never be a run-off and that he would get more than 70% of the votes in the first round, they were the ones that told him to say he just needed a few votes from Sierra Leoneans, they were the ones that told him that it is good practice to fool a people for ten years and then give them bribes later to vote for you, they were the ones that hailed him while he sacrificed Hinga Norman and Charles Margai, they were the ones that supported his decision not to participate in the all-important presidential debate, and now they are the ones that are still saying “hail Berewa, keep going.”

They have deliberately refused to tell him about how the people feel, that “man dem nor glady-o”; and they refuse to tell him that this is really the end – you know he has not even contested for a parliamentary seat. That's exactly what the witches did to Macbeth through the language of equivocation. And very soon Solo B will discover, as Macbeth when he had reached at the point of no return discovered, that power " but a walking shadow, a poor playethat struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

But Berewa is a lawyer, not a student of Literature. And don't expect him, same as Macbeth, not to put up the fight of his life. He would be prepared to do anything (tired of mentioning his flagrant bribery of voters denounced by international observers) to cling unto power, so that, again like Macbeth, even the death of a wife means nothing at all anymore. And I will not be surprised to hear that Berewa is begging Johnny Paul Koroma's PLP (an offshoot of the AFRC, for which Berewa as Attorney-General & Minister of Justice and lead prosecutor in a Sanni-Abacha-styled trial literally hand-picked and killed - even ignoring the pleas of the international community led by Britain - 24 helpless military officers, including Major Kula Samba, his own countrywoman whose only crime was to help former child combatants reintegrate into normal society) to join forces with him! I will not be surprised if he devices methods to create an atmosphere of chaos as they did to prolong the rebel war! Remember the Fayia Musa, Philip Palmer, Agnes Dean Jalloh debacle – “Bio bio Maada Bio in sister nar rebel!”

 I did some predictions before the first round and they all turned out to be true. I am doing another prediction here which will certainly turn out to be true – Berewa will not get as much as 38% of the votes in the run-off! Mark my words.

 Ernest Koroma has undone him ever since Sam Sumana was appointed running-mate for the APC. Now, I fully realize that Sumana could not win his own parliamentary seat in his native Kono (mainly because he came late into the campaign trail), and I also know that the SLPP had overwhelming support in the district in the first round. But I bet you it will be the reverse in the second round. In the history of party politics in Sierra Leone, the Kono people are known to be those who always sit on the fence and follow the wind. It is clear that their support for the SLPP initially was a self-protective measure with the feeling that the ruling party still had the support they had in the previous elections. Now they have seen that virtually the whole Western Area, the headquarters of state institutions, and the whole Northern Province, the largest geographical sub-division in the country, have ditched the SLPP. And the Konos are the last people to feel like Judas and be left out in what is clearly a democratic revolution in Sierra Leone. And now they have a golden excuse in Sam Sumana to change their allegiance to the APC.

This is certainly not tribalising or trivialising national politics. After all, the people of Kono have never seen themselves as being either particularly SLPP or exceptionally APC – all they have always desired is to be part of the majority. It is historical as well as geographical, and even social. The Kono people, like their women, know how to love you more after they have first rejected you. Even if late, they have this way of flowing with the national tide. Just check the history books. I would only wish Berewa knew this truth! But he does not; and he will not!

Apparently, I see Berewa as the direct opposite of his biblical namesake, King Solomon, who is dubbed as the wisest human judge ever. Do I need to recount the story? There were these two women that came to King Solomon both laying claims as the mother of a living child as against a dead one that had been killed by its own mother while sleeping. What the king did was to ask that the living child be divided into two since there was no witness to tell who the real mother was. One of the women (the real mother) pleaded with the king not to carry out his decision but to give the child to the other woman. But the second woman praised the king as a good judge and urged him to go ahead and cut the child into two. King Solomon, in his wisdom, immediately knew that the first woman was the real mother and he decided not to cut the child but to give it to her!

Sierra Leone is at the moment like that poor child; and Berewa, having killed his own party while sleeping for ten years, in all intents and purposes will be happy that the country be divided into two. But that division will not take place because the people, who are now acting as King Solomon, have seen that the person that has true love for Sierra Leone is Ernest Koroma. Because even with a remarkable first round victory, Koroma is still modest, calm and calculated, bringing Charles Margai to the fold and promising to set up a government of national unity devoid of tribalism. So the SLPP campaign of fanning tribal flames will be dampened by the fact that all Sierra Leoneans - Mende, Temne, Kissi, Bullom, Sherbro, Vai, Krim, Kono, Kru, Limba, Kuranko, Yalunka, Susu, Madingo, Loko, Fula, and Krio - have known the truth that will set them free. Sierra Leoneans are one people and Sierra Leone is one country – “firmly united ever we stand singing thy praise O native land”. Those who want to paint a different picture have only themselves to blame. Those who want to cling unto power at all cost like Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein will always pay all the cost!

Berewa would have done himself good to make an honourable exit by withdrawing from the contest in the interest of the nation – in spite of the constitution. Aha. Yes. Afterwards who discarded the constitution to make Foday Sankoh Vice President in the interest of the nation? Who discarded the constitution to make Johnny Paul Chairman of the Commission for the Consolidation of Peace in the interest of the nation? Who discarded the constitution to give a ministerial appointment to James Jonah immediately after he had conducted the 1996 elections in the interest of the nation?

Well, the interest of the nation is not only sought to perpetuate oneself into power, it can also be served in accepting that one has lost the moral foundation to further tax an already abused and economically- sucked nation with the cost of a run-off that one will certainly lose. It is in the interest of the nation if one accepts defeat to avoid a possible stand-off or worse in a country which is still licking its wounds from a senseless war. After all, who branded Karefa Smart as stubborn and arrogant for sticking to going for a run-off after Thaimu Bangura who came third in the first round had declared his support for the SLPP?  

It is every true Sierra Leonean's desire that the present compensatory image of a disciplined and civilized nation gained internationally through the way our people conducted themselves during these elections – somewhat covering up for our years of war-mongering - will not be marred through tensions created by the obstinacy to cling to power. Yet that's the path we are apparently being led on.

Clearly, Solomon Ekuma Berewa, outgoing Vice President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, like Shakespeare's Macbeth, has been tied to a stake. Adieu! For Sierra Leone must rise again. We should recapture our image as the ‘light' of West Africa, the ‘Athens' of West Africa, the country through which Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia and many more got education and civilization, and the country which still has a lot to offer to the comity of civilized nations both in terms of human and material resources.

God bless; God bless Sierra Leone