The National Electoral Commission Sierra Leone (ECSL) to be referred to as Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) has declared a date for the holding or conduct of the 2023 Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council Elections. The new date for the upcoming elections is 24 June 2023, which will see all layers of the elections – Presidential , Parliamentary, and Local Council – hold on the same day, with people from all walks of life making their choices as to who and those they would want to man the affairs of Sierra Leone in the next 5 years.
While we are of the view that the decision of the electoral commission to schedule the elections in this manner is within the confines of the law and in consonance with the approval of the president of the nation, we see some glaring porosity in the whole exercise.
For one we are a bit concerned and worried that the timing of the voting day could not permit many people or give them the opportunity to exercise the franchise, as the declared new period or date for voting is almost in the middle of the raining season in this country.
June is a peak raining season in Sierra Leone hence shifting a whole three- or four-tier national elections to such a period or date is tantamount to creating room or making provision for a great probability for tens of thousands of people to miss out in exercising their rights to vote in the elections in the event that torrential rainfall is experienced in various parts of the country on polling day.
One needs not to emphasise the fact that Sierra Leone is adorned with a lot of bad and awful roads, especially in the provinces and the inter-land of the country, where people would have to walk long distances and terrains to cast their votes. While this situation is a great possibility, there is also the probability that massive rigging could occur at this point in time in our seasonal calendar. Even in the dry season when the terrain is much better, recent happenings in elections conducted by NEC/ECSL have shown that massive fraud and vote rigging could take place in the event there was serious downpour of rains.
Hence, whilst we may use constitutionality for the shifting of the national elections date to June 2023, we should have also taken into consideration the realities of the natural weather of such a time as June 24 for a voting or polling day, because this is a time that we continue to experience heavy downpour of rains in Sierra Leone.
To many people, this declared new date for general elections in Sierra Leone has just added to the game plan of the powers that be and NEC/ECSL that they intend to manipulate the upcoming elections and its outcome.
Since January this year, there have been the issues of proportional representation and the 50.1 per cent threshold for electing a presidential candidate as recommended by the White Paper recently published by the government.
These two aspects were fished out from the White Paper report, which needs a thorough rethink by the populace and decision-makers in Sierra Leone, since proportional representation and the 50.1 per cent threshold for electing a presidential candidate, if adopted, would also be tantamount to rigging the upcoming presidential elections or to let the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) have an easy means of edging out opposition presidential candidates in the race.
According to many people including political analysts like Moses Gbow, proportional representation distances the people from their representatives. “People could hardly know who exactly is representing them in parliament as the representation of the members of parliament does not depend on the capacity and competence of the representative but maybe on the charisma or popularity of the Presidential candidate or the popularity of the party itself,” they say.
Also proportional representation does not allow electorate to scrutinize their representatives contrary to constituency election. As Moses Gbow rightly states, “We can affirm that over the years the voting patterns have changed. In 2018 some members of parliament lost their constituent seats whilst the presidential candidate of the same political party won with landslide victory. This is an indication that Sierra Leoneans are very enlightening. Therefore the populace deserves to vet and know the people that will represent them in parliament.
“Furthermore, there is a conjoined relationship to proportional representation and the proposed ploy to replace the 55 percent threshold with the 50 plus 1 alongside the infamous census all conjugate together.”
Another aspect of the upcoming 2023 elections that deserve serious consideration is the voter registration exercise being planned by NEC/ECSL to take place between September and October this year. Although Christopher A. A. Jones, Assistant Director of Public Relations at NEC/ECSL, calls it an update, the voter registration exercise should also be taken serious by the people, as our right to vote starts with us legally and properly registering to earn our voter ID cards.
As the 2023 elections gather moment, Forum would like the electoral body to uphold true democratic values and ensure the people of Sierra Leone revive their trust for them; otherwise, the ability of NEC/ECSL to oversee a political process of fairness, or to conduct a fair election devoid of vote rigging will continue to be seriously doubted by a majority of the people in this country as well as many democratic institutions and concerned individuals in and outside of Sierra Leone.
