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Misanet.com / IPS, 6 March - Sierra Leone's main rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), appears to be in disarray and clearly ill-prepared for the May general elections. Earlier this week, erstwhile RUF leader Foday Sankoh was slammed with a 70-count charge of murder and docked by the government before Freetown magistrate Deen Tarawallie, along with 49 of his supporters. This effectively disqualifies Sankoh from taking part in the elections despite the rebels' insistence that he would be their presidential candidate. Reacting to this turn of events, RUF Public Relations Officer Eldred Collins told IPS Wednesday: "We (RUF) were expecting that our leader would be released in time to contest the May presidential polls." - Now we are in big trouble to hold a national convention and nominate a new presidential candidate, he added. Last week, President Ahmed Kabbah lifted the state of public emergency, which had been in force for the past four years and which gave the President sweeping powers to order the detention of any person or group of people thought to be a threat to the public order and tranquillity. The emergency regulations effectively restricted the opposition, including the RUF party, from campaigning to the electorates. Besides that, the former rebel movement is cash-strapped and seems incapable of funding its own election campaign. Mike Lamin, a senior RUF official, said the government and the international community is squeezing them by denying them the proposed trust fund for the RUF's transformation into a political party. A peace deal which was signed between the government and RUF in May 1999, provided for a trust fund for the rebels but it has since not been forthcoming. The rebels now say they want to travel out of the country to solicit funds "from our friends abroad." But there is a travel ban slammed on senior RUF officials, by the UN, ucated is at war with interim leader Sesay, and this has split the rebels into two camps. - Their party's situation could better have been sold out to the world by Massaquoi who is much more authoritative and eloquent, commented political analyst Joseph Kamara in Freetown. The future is clearly not rosy for the RUF, a situation not made any better by the continued detention of Sankoh who is believed to be the unifying force for the rebel movement. Concluded Kamara: "As for as I see it the RUF is finished. There could be no strong RUF without
Sankoh." By Lansana Fofana, IPS
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