By Austin.thomas@awokonewspaper. Sl
Freetown, SIERRA LEONE – The All Peoples Congress (APC) election team in collaboration with the interim executive have criticized the Election Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) saying the entire voter registration process is fraudulent and they have to match all pronouncement they have made with data for them to be democratic.
In the press statement by Hon. Abdul Kargbo who is the Secretary of the interim body said the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL), conducted what it called a ‘Voter Verification/Registration’ for the 2023 multi-tier elections. The registration exercise, which was conducted from 3rd September to 4th October 2022, (extended by two days) was meant for citizens who had already registered and voted in previous elections to confirm their biometrics, review their personal information, and make corrections or inclusions where necessary. At the same time, it was also to register those who had not been registered previously.
He said from 24th to 28th November 2022, the ECSL also purportedly conducted a 5-day Exhibition /Verification exercise of the Provisional List of Voters. The APC, the Secretary said through their agents deployed across the country, they observed these processes in the field and believe that both the Voter Verification/Registration and the subsequent Exhibition/Verification exercises were exceedingly problematic.
“In our opinion, both exercises faced self-induced challenges and were deliberately designed and employed to create an unlevel playing field to disenfranchise a certain section of the electorate at the expense of our party. With regards to the Voter Verification/Registration, it has become evident the data for thousands of citizens who had registered in previous election cycle was either incomplete, incorrect or missing from the register. In many of these instances, citizens were not allowed to do the necessary corrections or create a fresh registration. Instead, citizens were inappropriately referred to the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) whose mandate does not include voter registration.”
The Mayor of the Freetown Municipality Madam Yvonne Aki-Sawyer said that they are disturbed because the figures from the registration are very strange as she said in Freetown of the 2021 census, which h recorded Western Urban to have a population of little over 609 thousand had 97% registration of over 550 thousand people.
If you take the figures in the South and East, it is quite different as about 22% to 25% of their total population registered for the June 2023 elections. The figures from 2020 report of Ministry of Basic Education stated that about 443,000 pupils are in my constituency. So, with all these figures I am in shock and can’t understand what ECSL is telling us.
The Chairman of the occasion Dr Richard Conteh made it very clear that they will not accept all the reports coming from ECSL about double registration, underage voters and the verification exercise, which was bent on disenfranchising voters from the APC strong holds in the West, Norther-west and North-east.
Hon. Abdul Kargbo made it very clear that in respect of ‘First Time Voters’, the ECSL violated its own rules and constitutional provisions on the eligibility of identification criteria for such. Part IV of Public Elections Section 24 stipulates that citizens are eligible to register either with (a) a birth certificate or a naturalisation certificate; (b) a statutory declaration giving particulars of his birth; (c) the testimony of a member of the local Council in the area of his residence; (d) National Identification Number; or (e) any other satisfactory evidence of his entitlement to be registered as voter. These provisions were ignored, and in addition, where the ECSL did not allow first time voters to register, they failed to issue rejection forms to these citizens.
He averred that the Exhibition exercise purportedly concluded on Monday 28th November, has exposed what appears to be an electoral strategy to skew the outcome of the June 2023 polls.
“Once again, thousands of people who reported to the designated Exhibition centers found out that the ECSL retained incomplete and incorrect data. Thousands of photos were absent along with names, addresses and other details being inaccurate. In these cases, correction to inclusion forms were not issued out to affected persons as mandated by law.”
The Secretary of the Interim executive of the party said the ECSL deleted by district, 607 registrants determined to be underage. ECSL also deleted, without reference to districts, 257,123 registrants, approximately 7% of total registrants, who they stated were duplicate voters. An ECSL press release dated 30th November 2022 “The Commission acknowledges concerns from registered voters relating to the omission of some names from the Provisional List of Voters, photo less registration details and incomplete data in some centers… The ECSL is closely working with the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) to resolve this issue.”
“The lack of transparency, openness, inclusiveness, of ECSL in its operations has considerably tarnished the integrity of both the voter registration processes and thus we believe has compromised the Provisional List of Voters. Moreover, the numerous challenges the public encountered during the Registration and Verification exercises and the ECSL’s unresponsiveness to stakeholders’ concerns and the failure to address these, has substantially undermined public trust in the entire electoral process. We believe that these setbacks could result in significant voter apathy.”
Chairman Alfred Peter Conteh averred that the APC is justifiably concerned that such public mistrust engendered by ECSL and their inability and failure to conduct free, peaceful, smooth and credible Voter Registration and Verification processes represent a slur on, and shameful reversal of the nation’s hard-won democracy. The performance of ECSL and their persistent disregard for the Law he said so far holds the potential for very chaotic elections which is a serious threat to the peace and security of the country.
“Unfortunately, all concerns raised and reported by the APC to the Elections Management Bodies (EMBs) and ECSL regarding the same, have not yielded results. In view of ECSL’s current performance and posture, the APC is constrained to state that ECSL as currently constituted, staffed and manned, lacks the competence and trust to conduct free, peaceful and credible elections.”
The Legal representative in the interim executive Lawyer Alpha Jalloh said that the party is not happy especially with the PR system they want to force down the citizens throat, so the party has gone to the Supreme Court for interpretation on six key points and they are hoping that the Chief Justice within the shortest possible time will assemble the Judges to seat on the panel and explain to the public about the use of the PR System.
He said since the registration process started they have been making their views known but the ECSL have refused to listen or provide the required data to back up their defense. This he said is not good for democracy.
