The seemingly egregious and outrageous response by the Elections Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) to the request of the APC Tripartite Committee Team to make clarifications on the 60% of Presidential Elections results announced on 26 June 2023 just smirks deceit and non-compliance to transparency and accountability.
Clearly, the ECSL has proved itself as a considerable anathema to the peace and quiet of the State of Sierra Leone with its nonchalant response which seems to suggest that the APC Tripartite Committee Team acted ultra vires the Terms of Reference set for its modus operandi.
But has the ECSL asked itself why was a “fiat” granted by the SLPP Tripartite Committee Team to its counterpart to go ahead with the request? Simply, its because they feel embarrassed by the matter given the huge spate of discrepancies noticed in the overall calculus of the data presented to the Committee for analysis.
It is but evidently clearly that substantial polling stations in so-called SLPP strongholds in Pujehun, Kailahun, Kenema and Bonthe districts over voted in excess of the 300 voter threshold set for all polling stations. By law established, results from those polling stations should have been declared null and void. But because the ECSL had its sleeves choked with a hidden agenda, went on to accept those results which by all indications may have informed the 60% of the Presidential results announced by the Mohamed Kenewu Konneh the National Returning Officer, thereby criminally awarding the presidency to Julius Maada Bio.
But the Co-chair of the APC Tripartite Committee Team, Dr. Kaifala Marah has in an X (Tweet) affirmed: “ECSL can’t bluff its way out! Sorry. You have to come clean & make clarifications on the 60% of presidential elections results you announced on 26 June 2023. Your letter just reinforced our deadlock with Govt on the Tripartite Committee.”
But this is not surprising to most disgruntled Sierra Leoneans who are fed up with the state of inertia and back-pedalling of the country in the past five plus under Maada Bio’s brutish and nonchalant Government, that cares less about the sufferings of the people including those who were hoodwinked into casting some votes for them in the 26 June 2023 elections. This, to a greater extent as pointed out by the APC Team, is partial and represented only 7,099 polling stations.
The ECSL and Konneh are emboldened by the fact that they have the backing of the President who on several occasions has said there will be no other elections in the country until 2028. The President keeps re-echoing this and even affirmed it to the ECSL and Konneh when they recently presented to him the ECSL Annual Report at State House.
The President is even on record for inciting chaos well ahead of what is an extension of the deadlock between the APC and the SLPP teams in the Tripartite Committee on the one hand, and the stalemate in peaceful coexistence between the APC and Government on the other hand.
Sierra Leoneans are now grasping the fact as to the surrealism of the June 26 elections outcomes that, the results in their entirety were fictitious, premeditated, concocted and designed by Konneh and his caboodle at the ECSL to deny the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans their actual voice and their actual decision in choosing who they wanted as their President in the June 26, 2023 elections.
Dr. Marah and his colleagues should therefore stand their position as they have always maintained throughout the process of the Committee’s work six months on. They should continue to hold and squeeze Konneh’s scrotum hard so that he acquiesces with the demand of the people. That is the way to go, and indeed, the ECSL and Konneh must not bluff their way out of this.
Pressure should and must exerted on the ECSL and Konneh to make clarifications on this most contentious issue in Sierra Leone’s recent history. In ensuring that Sierra Leone is put on track as a beacon of democracy due to the work so done by the Tripartite Committee in reviewing elections laws and reforming elections bodies, this clarification requested by the APC Tripartite Committee Team must be complied with and that will serve as a benchmark for a free, fair, transparent and inclusive future elections. If this is not set right now, nothing will go right in the near future especially with Bio and his caboodle of henchmen and henchwomen being at the helm of things.
The ECSL should just clean itself out of this cesspool.
