The All Peoples Congress (APC) party has expressed serious concern that the upcoming 2023 presidential and national election is under threat, saying the results of the 2021 Mid-Term Population and Housing Census released on Tuesday 31 May 2022 by Statistics Sierra Leone would jeopardize the country’s peace and security and create violence if those results were allowed to be used to determine the 2023 elections.
“The 2023 elections are now clearly under threat and we call on our development partners and the International Community to intervene now and help salvage the situation,” said an APC statement issued on 2 June 2022 by the National Secretariat of the Party’s Interim Transitional Governing Council (ITGC).
The statement, signed by the Secretary and Head of the National Secretariat, Hon. Abdul Kargbo, stated further: “The APC Party completely rejects the outcome of the Mid-Term Census and wishes it to be known that if this crooked process is allowed to proceed unchecked, it will undermine the democratic gains we have all painstakingly tried to nurture and sustain, and will further threaten the peace and security of our beloved country. The 2023 elections are now clearly under threat and we call on our development partners and the International Community to intervene now and help salvage the situation.”
The APC made it unequivocally that they would not accept the provisional results of the 2021 Mid-Term Census.
“We will not accept the provisional results as presented and will oppose any attempts to delimit boundaries using these discredited data, in which for instance the total number of registered voters in the Western Area Urban District in 2018 elections far exceeds the total population in the 2021 Mid-Term Census provisional result for same,” the statement says, adding: “We therefore call on all Sierra Leoneans and the International Community to condemn this move and challenge the validity of the results as announced.”
The APC statement outlined several blatant and surreptitious steps taken by the SLPP-led government to achieve the outcome of the just published mid-term census results as well as unconstitutional and forceful actions carried out over the years by them since they assumed power in 2018.
“On 19 April 2021, the SLPP-led government forced through and improperly laid in Parliament the Statutory Instrument for the Mid-Term Census,” the statement recalled, stating: “The Instrument was brought to Parliament after Statistics Sierra Leone had already commenced cartographic mapping, a crucial antecedent to every census program which requires several months of preparation for a successful outcome.”
The statement further highlighted the planned boundary delimitation exercise by the SLPP-led government to get more wards and constituencies added to its strongholds to get more seats in parliament in the forthcoming elections.
“Fellow Sierra Leoneans and members of the International Community will recall that the APC Party has been consistent in its apprehensions about the quality and standards of the mid-term census because it was flawed in terms of processes, planning and implementation, thereby fuelling speculations about the dubious intentions of the SLPP Government to use the results of the Mid-Term census to proceed with boundary delimitation and thus create new wards, constituencies and districts to their advantage.
“The SLPP’s call on the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone to proceed with the delimitation of constituency boundaries, and for the Government to dismiss all condemnations of the census result clearly confirms that the SLPP-led government had ulterior motive in pushing ahead with the Mid-Term census even when it was apparent that they were not technically and procedurally carried out.”
The statement continued to highlight the absurdity of the census results and referencing the withdrawal of international partners such as the World Bank from the census process, saying: “Similarly, thirteen (13) registered political parties including the APC in the Consortium of Progressive Parties (COPPP) foresaw that the probability of failure of the Mid-Term census by far outweighs the justifications advanced for conducting a census midway into the 2022 Local Council Elections and the 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.
“On 7th December 2021, World Bank addressed a letter to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economic and Development Planning in which the World Bank conveyed its reservations about the credibility of the process and withdrew its technical and financial support.”
The statement added that the APC had been making public their concerns bearing in mind that the World Bank, UN Agencies such as UNFPA and other Development Partners had contributed immensely to making sure that “Sierra Leone conducts credible and all-acceptable census”.
