By Osman Kargbo

A plan is in the making to shift the goal post or stipulated time of how the elections and polls or votes count should be conducted after the people of Sierra Leone will have cast their votes for their choice of president and national representatives on 24 June 2023, such as in any other similar polls in the country under the present electoral laws of the land.

According to a recent post or tweet by the former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, a one-time chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara, commonly known as JFK, the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) has declared in a recent meeting that “for the Presidential elections, they would count votes at the District level and not count votes polling station by polling station”. If true, he twitted, it is contrary to Section 51 of the Elections Act of 2022, and a recipe for chaos and open opportunity for vote rigging.

Such a decision, if finally taken and carried out by the ECSL, would for sure amount to a violation of Sierra Leone’s Elections Act of 2022. It would also certainly create opportunity for vote rigging and widespread fraud in the elections, vote count, and declaration of a winner, which also is a recipe for chaos in the country.

We are therefore bringing up this issue to light, as hinted by JFK, to let it not be said of us, they did not raise the stick until the snake passed. The country’s electoral body would expose Sierra Leone to a dangerous path if such a decision is taken and anything obscure ends up happening as regards the rightful or perceived winner.

That is why where and how the votes count should be carried out in Sierra Leone is clearly stated in the country’s Elections Act of 2022, as follows: Section 51, declaration of election result, states in subsections 1 and 2: “(1): A Presiding Officer shall, after the expiration of the time fixed for polling, count the votes, polling station by polling station, certify the result of the counting, stating the number of valid votes cast in favour of each presidential candidate to the District Returning Officer, who shall in turn certify the result to the Regional Returning Officer and the Regional Returning Officer shall in turn certified the result to the National Returning Officer:

(2) As soon as possible after receipt of the result of the counting of votes under subsection (1), the Returning Officer shall tally and compute the results certified to him by the various Presiding Officers and shall after that declare the result of the election.”

The above is exactly what the elections laws of Sierra Leone state, but if the ECSL under umpire Mohamed Kenewui Konneh is trying to obscure the outcome of the elections by bending the laws and rules of vote counting, then Sierra Leone is being placed up the creek, as it would be difficult to accept any results declared out of the elections. We are therefore pleading with Mr Konneh that we do not want trouble in the upcoming elections.

The June 24 polls should not be a do-or-die affair, as one of the regional electoral commissioners for South, Edmund Alpha, has said: ‘Who wins wins; who loses”. That is right, but the elections must not be rigged or the process allowed to give semblance of rigging – now, during and after the polls.

Everyone, therefore, should do their best to ensure the people of Sierra Leone go through a peaceful election that all and sundry would consider free, fair and transparent.

It is thus essential that ECSL and indeed everybody in Sierra Leone and beyond be reminded that the result of an election should not be determined on what happens on polling day alone. If the electioneering and the electoral processes of an election are not free and fair, the results of such an election shall not be considered free and fair, and would be automatically rejected outright.  It is therefore significant that the electoral body in Sierra Leone does all it could to maintain the peace and tranquillity of the country through ensuring that the upcoming elections of June 24 become an exercise of making or rebuilding Sierra Leone and not one of breaking the country apart as a result of election rigging and other fraudulent activities. The right thing should be done by ECSL particularly to ensure a fair and peaceful election so that the nation does not resort to what former US President JF Kennedy once said that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”. We as individuals and as a nation should do everything possible to conduct a transparent, free and fair election; so that all will be satisfied with the outcome and let peace reign in our beloved land of Sierra Leone.

ECSL under Konneh is mirrored negatively by many Sierra Leoneans in and out of the country, particularly because of the many blunders and fraudulent activities that have taken place under his watch over the past four to five years that NEC and now ECSL has been conducting elections in the country. Many by-elections in the last four years were marred by fraudulence and vote rigging, leading to several cancellations of election outcomes, and costing the government and people of Sierra Leone to lose billions of Leones, lives and properties.

We don’t want such a situation in Sierra Leone hence we are advising and calling on ECSL and its Chief Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh to handle the upcoming elections fairly to avoid his name be written down in the annals of Sierra Leone election history that he was the man who brought about the severest political mayhem and wanton destruction of lives and properties in Sierra Leone.

We should at all times avoid anything that would destroy the peace of Sierra Leone, especially for the fact that peace is like a slippery fish; once it escapes, it would be difficult to get it back, not until after some bitter discord, mayhem and destruction would have occurred.

It is therefore essential that ECSL shows respect for the constitution and election laws of Sierra Leone and does the right thing to get the elections conducted fairly and peacefully. It is said that the wise looks over and the fool overlooks. We don’t want to overlook any wrongful trudge of our electoral body that may take us our nation in the abyss of so many regrets.