The people of Sierra Leone are ready for presidential, parliamentary and local council elections in less than a year from now in 2023. And the Parliament has been inundated with electoral related legislations while leaders of opposition parties, on their own part, worked hard in tilting public opinion against suspicious bits of legislations embedded in the 2022 Public Elections Bill, which has been passed into law to the satisfaction of many electorates on the 29th July 2022.
But it wasn’t that fast: Quite recently, attentive citizens were jittery that the government will use a proposed welfare bill that was formulated and introduced by MPs across the aisle to broker a deal to pass electoral laws leaders of opposition parties believe are designed to help President Bio to rig elections in 2023.
Indeed, the MPs Welfare Bill is replete with goodies meant to inject much more steroids into their salaries and benefits package that was supposed to bring them at per with the enviable blotted salaries and benefits packages of the Executive, the Judicial arms of government as well as heads of departments and agencies in President Bio’s government.
We may not know the true fate of the MP’s Welfare Bill at this juncture, but we do know that the hue and cry from the public in fear that it could have served as a quid pro quo for the passing of the Public Elections Bill hook, line and sinker weaned off the enthusiasm of the House of Parliament from the Bill, at least, for now.
Impressively and to the credit of MPs, the Public Elections Bill was passed into law without the major contested and suspicious bits such as the proposals to use the National Identification Number (NIN) for voter registration purpose and the Proportional Representation (PR).
MP’s credibility and capacity had been questioned when a top SLPP government officer alluded to an unfounded and baseless claim on the mainstream media that theirs is a Parliament of buffoons, when making a case that the PR system will encourage a rich human resource Parliament.
In turn, MPs have restored their credibility by demonstrating high level attentiveness and responsiveness to the demands of their electorates. They carefully cherry-picked all the reactionary bits from the Public Election Bill before passing it into an Act of Parliament.
But it wasn’t all over yet: For an obdurate government under the leadership of a known dictator and autocrat, for him, the effort of the MPs may just be a step backwards. On the backdrop that his government, from the onset, ministered and facilitated a rigged election of the Speaker of the House of Parliament through an unprecedented act of violence in which 68 MPs of the All Peoples Congress (APC) party were manhandled and kicked out of the Well of Parliament to enable a lopsided election of the Speaker, serious operatives of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government believe that President Bio has the last ace up his sleeve; that he will come back swinging with the PR system in the form of a proclamation.
Since that brutal election of the illegal Speaker of Parliament, President Bio’s government has become notorious for constitutional breaches, rigging of bye-elections and perpetuating electoral violence, committing crimes of human rights abuses, ordering arbitrary arrests, police brutality and giving a blind eye to extrajudicial killings of dissenters.
In all of these, the Judiciary has been a willing corroborator on the bench, presiding over trump up charges against and legitimizing arbitrary arrests and remand of opposition politicians as well as the infamous judgement in the removal of ten APC party MPs from Parliament and their replacement with Court appointed MPs.
Outside of Parliament, line ministries, departments, commissions and agencies are on a second track in preparedness to pull off President Bio’s election winning stratagems by any means necessary. Wearied citizens of hardship and unbearable cost of living are demanding change, but apprehensive that the Electoral Commision for Sierra Leone (ECSL), the Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats-SL) and the National Civil Registration Administration (NaCRA) as well as senior officers of the security sector are all on the third track poised to dash the hopes and aspirations of the citizenry for change by rigging the 2023 elections in favor of President Bio if not stopped in their tracks.
Now that Stats-SL’s skewed census has been exposed and became questionable, and NaCRA’s NIM has been expunged from the Public Elections Laws, President Bio’s fall back on is the unbridled determination of ECSL to utilize such questionable Stats-SL’s data for boundary delimitation.
Hon. Daniel Koroma, MP of the opposition APC party sheds some light on the complex political intrigues and intricacies: “It is impossible for the president or for any other authority to invoke Section 38A of Act Number 15 to usher in the PR system.” He explained further that “The Public Elections Act is a law based on Act Number 6 in favor of the existing first-past-the-post.”
Despite the forgoing and whereas established constituencies exist, there is still a cause for concern: President Bio’s instinct for breaching constitutional law and violating electoral laws and acts of parliament on his unquenchable thirst for power is unprecedented.
It simply means that, if the process of boundary delimitation is rendered incomplete by ECSL, President Bio, in his quest for a second term presidency, will likely wrongfully invoke Section 38A of Act Number 6, which provides for the PR system in the absence of established constituencies.
Even though the Act provides for no such proclamation once elections date has been pronounced, President Bio may disregard that provision of the law and prepare his cohorts for an uphill battle against the people this time around:
In that preparedness, the Director of Operations at ECSL is a South-easterner from Bonthe, President Bio’s home district. He supervises all five (5) Assistant Directors of Operations who are also South-easterners from the Mende tribe. The entire Information Technology (IT) Department in charge of voters roll are South-easterners of the Mende tribe.
The ECSL has just completed the recruitment process of over 400 Ward Coordinators without displaying their names to give political parties and election stakeholders the opportunity to vet them. According to our findings, in all past elections since 2007, the recruitment process in ECSL has been open, transparent, accountable and opened to civil society organizations (CSOs) as well as representatives of political parties.
Disenchanted operatives at ECSL have revealed that some CSOs were confounded and dumbed founded when they were denied access to the ECSL briefings held in offices across the country, a practice that is contrary to the traditional standard operating procedure (SOP) of the past.
What is more, the Assistant Director for Northeast, Mr. Paul Damba was accused of tampering with RRFs and was under investigation for which there has been no outcome. Instead, although the ECSL has not made it public, Paul Damba is still an active employee of ECSL.
In ward 196 in Kambia district, Tonko Limba chiefdom, ballot papers for that canceled bye-election in the custody of the District Electoral Officer and his assistant were found in the hands of voters and into ballot boxes of the re-run bye-election of that Ward.
The outcome of ECSL’s investigation into the forgoing incident resulted not into punishment of the culprits but the promotion of all of the ECSL staff involved:
1) Mohamed Turay; Assistant Director Northwest has now been promoted to Director of Operations. 2) Umaru Fomba; District Electoral Officer Kambia has now been promoted as Assistant Director Northwest. 3) Augustine Saffa has been promoted from Assistant District Electoral Officer Kambia to District Electoral Officer Kenema.
The above is the normal practice in President Bio’s Sierra Leone: those who are trustworthy and upstanding are considered to be in his way to clinch on to power and are immediately sacked.
For example, just when IGP Sovula began to realize he’s been used as a lapdog and tried to retract into normal policing, either through pressure from international observers or by his own volition, his changed characterization was quickly picked up by the President Bio government, and he was hacked off like many senior government operatives before him under President Bio.
The ECSL Electoral Cycle — 2020-2024 — Strategy Plan states that boundary delimitation should take place in 2024 and even though the president can order that activity after five years and before seven years, the ECSL is demonstrating an unusual overzealousness to utilize Stats-SL’s questionable data for boundary delimitation in a hurry.
In fact, according to some political pundits, Stats-SL data is shrouded in secrecy and therefore calling on political parties to demand a forensic audit of Stats-SL data as well as a forensic audit of NCRA’s data.
They are also calling on opposition politicians to demand that all voter registration centers (VRCs) be published and that all registration of voters be updated and published in real time and on a daily basis at the center, on the social media and on ECSL website.
“If government is conveniently utilizing the WhatsApp social media platform to disseminate information in their favor, it should also be able to use the same platform for the purpose of transparency and accountability to the people” they stated.
“Roguery in governance is at its best in Sierra Leone” said one opposition politician. And the shared sentiment amongst the people is that President Bio and his cohorts must be watched and must be vigilantly watched in the run up to 2023.
Register to vote and to vote Karamoh Kabba for National Organizing Secretary at the next NDC for an in-depth understanding of the issues and with the spine to protect your votes in 2023.
But it wasn’t that fast: Quite recently, attentive citizens were jittery that the government will use a proposed welfare bill that was formulated and introduced by MPs across the aisle to broker a deal to pass electoral laws leaders of opposition parties believe are designed to help President Bio to rig elections in 2023.
Indeed, the MPs Welfare Bill is replete with goodies meant to inject much more steroids into their salaries and benefits package that was supposed to bring them at per with the enviable blotted salaries and benefits packages of the Executive, the Judicial arms of government as well as heads of departments and agencies in President Bio’s government.
We may not know the true fate of the MP’s Welfare Bill at this juncture, but we do know that the hue and cry from the public in fear that it could have served as a quid pro quo for the passing of the Public Elections Bill hook, line and sinker weaned off the enthusiasm of the House of Parliament from the Bill, at least, for now.
Impressively and to the credit of MPs, the Public Elections Bill was passed into law without the major contested and suspicious bits such as the proposals to use the National Identification Number (NIN) for voter registration purpose and the Proportional Representation (PR).
MP’s credibility and capacity had been questioned when a top SLPP government officer alluded to an unfounded and baseless claim on the mainstream media that theirs is a Parliament of buffoons, when making a case that the PR system will encourage a rich human resource Parliament.
In turn, MPs have restored their credibility by demonstrating high level attentiveness and responsiveness to the demands of their electorates. They carefully cherry-picked all the reactionary bits from the Public Election Bill before passing it into an Act of Parliament.
But it wasn’t all over yet: For an obdurate government under the leadership of a known dictator and autocrat, for him, the effort of the MPs may just be a step backwards. On the backdrop that his government, from the onset, ministered and facilitated a rigged election of the Speaker of the House of Parliament through an unprecedented act of violence in which 68 MPs of the All Peoples Congress (APC) party were manhandled and kicked out of the Well of Parliament to enable a lopsided election of the Speaker, serious operatives of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government believe that President Bio has the last ace up his sleeve; that he will come back swinging with the PR system in the form of a proclamation.
Since that brutal election of the illegal Speaker of Parliament, President Bio’s government has become notorious for constitutional breaches, rigging of bye-elections and perpetuating electoral violence, committing crimes of human rights abuses, ordering arbitrary arrests, police brutality and giving a blind eye to extrajudicial killings of dissenters.
In all of these, the Judiciary has been a willing corroborator on the bench, presiding over trump up charges against and legitimizing arbitrary arrests and remand of opposition politicians as well as the infamous judgement in the removal of ten APC party MPs from Parliament and their replacement with Court appointed MPs.
Outside of Parliament, line ministries, departments, commissions and agencies are on a second track in preparedness to pull off President Bio’s election winning stratagems by any means necessary. Wearied citizens of hardship and unbearable cost of living are demanding change, but apprehensive that the Electoral Commision for Sierra Leone (ECSL), the Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats-SL) and the National Civil Registration Administration (NaCRA) as well as senior officers of the security sector are all on the third track poised to dash the hopes and aspirations of the citizenry for change by rigging the 2023 elections in favor of President Bio if not stopped in their tracks.
Now that Stats-SL’s skewed census has been exposed and became questionable, and NaCRA’s NIM has been expunged from the Public Elections Laws, President Bio’s fall back on is the unbridled determination of ECSL to utilize such questionable Stats-SL’s data for boundary delimitation.
Hon. Daniel Koroma, MP of the opposition APC party sheds some light on the complex political intrigues and intricacies: “It is impossible for the president or for any other authority to invoke Section 38A of Act Number 15 to usher in the PR system.” He explained further that “The Public Elections Act is a law based on Act Number 6 in favor of the existing first-past-the-post.”
Despite the forgoing and whereas established constituencies exist, there is still a cause for concern: President Bio’s instinct for breaching constitutional law and violating electoral laws and acts of parliament on his unquenchable thirst for power is unprecedented.
It simply means that, if the process of boundary delimitation is rendered incomplete by ECSL, President Bio, in his quest for a second term presidency, will likely wrongfully invoke Section 38A of Act Number 6, which provides for the PR system in the absence of established constituencies.
Even though the Act provides for no such proclamation once elections date has been pronounced, President Bio may disregard that provision of the law and prepare his cohorts for an uphill battle against the people this time around:
In that preparedness, the Director of Operations at ECSL is a South-easterner from Bonthe, President Bio’s home district. He supervises all five (5) Assistant Directors of Operations who are also South-easterners from the Mende tribe. The entire Information Technology (IT) Department in charge of voters roll are South-easterners of the Mende tribe.
The ECSL has just completed the recruitment process of over 400 Ward Coordinators without displaying their names to give political parties and election stakeholders the opportunity to vet them. According to our findings, in all past elections since 2007, the recruitment process in ECSL has been open, transparent, accountable and opened to civil society organizations (CSOs) as well as representatives of political parties.
Disenchanted operatives at ECSL have revealed that some CSOs were confounded and dumbed founded when they were denied access to the ECSL briefings held in offices across the country, a practice that is contrary to the traditional standard operating procedure (SOP) of the past.
What is more, the Assistant Director for Northeast, Mr. Paul Damba was accused of tampering with RRFs and was under investigation for which there has been no outcome. Instead, although the ECSL has not made it public, Paul Damba is still an active employee of ECSL.
In ward 196 in Kambia district, Tonko Limba chiefdom, ballot papers for that canceled bye-election in the custody of the District Electoral Officer and his assistant were found in the hands of voters and into ballot boxes of the re-run bye-election of that Ward.
The outcome of ECSL’s investigation into the forgoing incident resulted not into punishment of the culprits but the promotion of all of the ECSL staff involved:
1) Mohamed Turay; Assistant Director Northwest has now been promoted to Director of Operations. 2) Umaru Fomba; District Electoral Officer Kambia has now been promoted as Assistant Director Northwest. 3) Augustine Saffa has been promoted from Assistant District Electoral Officer Kambia to District Electoral Officer Kenema.
The above is the normal practice in President Bio’s Sierra Leone: those who are trustworthy and upstanding are considered to be in his way to clinch on to power and are immediately sacked.
For example, just when IGP Sovula began to realize he’s been used as a lapdog and tried to retract into normal policing, either through pressure from international observers or by his own volition, his changed characterization was quickly picked up by the President Bio government, and he was hacked off like many senior government operatives before him under President Bio.
The ECSL Electoral Cycle — 2020-2024 — Strategy Plan states that boundary delimitation should take place in 2024 and even though the president can order that activity after five years and before seven years, the ECSL is demonstrating an unusual overzealousness to utilize Stats-SL’s questionable data for boundary delimitation in a hurry.
In fact, according to some political pundits, Stats-SL data is shrouded in secrecy and therefore calling on political parties to demand a forensic audit of Stats-SL data as well as a forensic audit of NCRA’s data.
They are also calling on opposition politicians to demand that all voter registration centers (VRCs) be published and that all registration of voters be updated and published in real time and on a daily basis at the center, on the social media and on ECSL website.
“If government is conveniently utilizing the WhatsApp social media platform to disseminate information in their favor, it should also be able to use the same platform for the purpose of transparency and accountability to the people” they stated.
“Roguery in governance is at its best in Sierra Leone” said one opposition politician. And the shared sentiment amongst the people is that President Bio and his cohorts must be watched and must be vigilantly watched in the run up to 2023.
Register to vote and to vote Karamoh Kabba for National Organizing Secretary at the next NDC for an in-depth understanding of the issues and with the spine to protect your votes in 2023.
But it wasn’t that fast: Quite recently, attentive citizens were jittery that the government will use a proposed welfare bill that was formulated and introduced by MPs across the aisle to broker a deal to pass electoral laws leaders of opposition parties believe are designed to help President Bio to rig elections in 2023.
Indeed, the MPs Welfare Bill is replete with goodies meant to inject much more steroids into their salaries and benefits package that was supposed to bring them at per with the enviable blotted salaries and benefits packages of the Executive, the Judicial arms of government as well as heads of departments and agencies in President Bio’s government.
We may not know the true fate of the MP’s Welfare Bill at this juncture, but we do know that the hue and cry from the public in fear that it could have served as a quid pro quo for the passing of the Public Elections Bill hook, line and sinker weaned off the enthusiasm of the House of Parliament from the Bill, at least, for now.
Impressively and to the credit of MPs, the Public Elections Bill was passed into law without the major contested and suspicious bits such as the proposals to use the National Identification Number (NIN) for voter registration purpose and the Proportional Representation (PR).
MP’s credibility and capacity had been questioned when a top SLPP government officer alluded to an unfounded and baseless claim on the mainstream media that theirs is a Parliament of buffoons, when making a case that the PR system will encourage a rich human resource Parliament.
In turn, MPs have restored their credibility by demonstrating high level attentiveness and responsiveness to the demands of their electorates. They carefully cherry-picked all the reactionary bits from the Public Election Bill before passing it into an Act of Parliament.
But it wasn’t all over yet: For an obdurate government under the leadership of a known dictator and autocrat, for him, the effort of the MPs may just be a step backwards. On the backdrop that his government, from the onset, ministered and facilitated a rigged election of the Speaker of the House of Parliament through an unprecedented act of violence in which 68 MPs of the All Peoples Congress (APC) party were manhandled and kicked out of the Well of Parliament to enable a lopsided election of the Speaker, serious operatives of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government believe that President Bio has the last ace up his sleeve; that he will come back swinging with the PR system in the form of a proclamation.
Since that brutal election of the illegal Speaker of Parliament, President Bio’s government has become notorious for constitutional breaches, rigging of bye-elections and perpetuating electoral violence, committing crimes of human rights abuses, ordering arbitrary arrests, police brutality and giving a blind eye to extrajudicial killings of dissenters.
In all of these, the Judiciary has been a willing corroborator on the bench, presiding over trump up charges against and legitimizing arbitrary arrests and remand of opposition politicians as well as the infamous judgement in the removal of ten APC party MPs from Parliament and their replacement with Court appointed MPs.
Outside of Parliament, line ministries, departments, commissions and agencies are on a second track in preparedness to pull off President Bio’s election winning stratagems by any means necessary. Wearied citizens of hardship and unbearable cost of living are demanding change, but apprehensive that the Electoral Commision for Sierra Leone (ECSL), the Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats-SL) and the National Civil Registration Administration (NaCRA) as well as senior officers of the security sector are all on the third track poised to dash the hopes and aspirations of the citizenry for change by rigging the 2023 elections in favor of President Bio if not stopped in their tracks.
Now that Stats-SL’s skewed census has been exposed and became questionable, and NaCRA’s NIM has been expunged from the Public Elections Laws, President Bio’s fall back on is the unbridled determination of ECSL to utilize such questionable Stats-SL’s data for boundary delimitation.
Hon. Daniel Koroma, MP of the opposition APC party sheds some light on the complex political intrigues and intricacies: “It is impossible for the president or for any other authority to invoke Section 38A of Act Number 15 to usher in the PR system.” He explained further that “The Public Elections Act is a law based on Act Number 6 in favor of the existing first-past-the-post.”
Despite the forgoing and whereas established constituencies exist, there is still a cause for concern: President Bio’s instinct for breaching constitutional law and violating electoral laws and acts of parliament on his unquenchable thirst for power is unprecedented.
It simply means that, if the process of boundary delimitation is rendered incomplete by ECSL, President Bio, in his quest for a second term presidency, will likely wrongfully invoke Section 38A of Act Number 6, which provides for the PR system in the absence of established constituencies.
Even though the Act provides for no such proclamation once elections date has been pronounced, President Bio may disregard that provision of the law and prepare his cohorts for an uphill battle against the people this time around:
In that preparedness, the Director of Operations at ECSL is a South-easterner from Bonthe, President Bio’s home district. He supervises all five (5) Assistant Directors of Operations who are also South-easterners from the Mende tribe. The entire Information Technology (IT) Department in charge of voters roll are South-easterners of the Mende tribe.
The ECSL has just completed the recruitment process of over 400 Ward Coordinators without displaying their names to give political parties and election stakeholders the opportunity to vet them. According to our findings, in all past elections since 2007, the recruitment process in ECSL has been open, transparent, accountable and opened to civil society organizations (CSOs) as well as representatives of political parties.
Disenchanted operatives at ECSL have revealed that some CSOs were confounded and dumbed founded when they were denied access to the ECSL briefings held in offices across the country, a practice that is contrary to the traditional standard operating procedure (SOP) of the past.
What is more, the Assistant Director for Northeast, Mr. Paul Damba was accused of tampering with RRFs and was under investigation for which there has been no outcome. Instead, although the ECSL has not made it public, Paul Damba is still an active employee of ECSL.
In ward 196 in Kambia district, Tonko Limba chiefdom, ballot papers for that canceled bye-election in the custody of the District Electoral Officer and his assistant were found in the hands of voters and into ballot boxes of the re-run bye-election of that Ward.
The outcome of ECSL’s investigation into the forgoing incident resulted not into punishment of the culprits but the promotion of all of the ECSL staff involved:
1) Mohamed Turay; Assistant Director Northwest has now been promoted to Director of Operations. 2) Umaru Fomba; District Electoral Officer Kambia has now been promoted as Assistant Director Northwest. 3) Augustine Saffa has been promoted from Assistant District Electoral Officer Kambia to District Electoral Officer Kenema.
The above is the normal practice in President Bio’s Sierra Leone: those who are trustworthy and upstanding are considered to be in his way to clinch on to power and are immediately sacked.
For example, just when IGP Sovula began to realize he’s been used as a lapdog and tried to retract into normal policing, either through pressure from international observers or by his own volition, his changed characterization was quickly picked up by the President Bio government, and he was hacked off like many senior government operatives before him under President Bio.
The ECSL Electoral Cycle — 2020-2024 — Strategy Plan states that boundary delimitation should take place in 2024 and even though the president can order that activity after five years and before seven years, the ECSL is demonstrating an unusual overzealousness to utilize Stats-SL’s questionable data for boundary delimitation in a hurry.
In fact, according to some political pundits, Stats-SL data is shrouded in secrecy and therefore calling on political parties to demand a forensic audit of Stats-SL data as well as a forensic audit of NCRA’s data.
They are also calling on opposition politicians to demand that all voter registration centers (VRCs) be published and that all registration of voters be updated and published in real time and on a daily basis at the center, on the social media and on ECSL website.
“If government is conveniently utilizing the WhatsApp social media platform to disseminate information in their favor, it should also be able to use the same platform for the purpose of transparency and accountability to the people” they stated.
“Roguery in governance is at its best in Sierra Leone” said one opposition politician. And the shared sentiment amongst the people is that President Bio and his cohorts must be watched and must be vigilantly watched in the run up to 2023.
Register to vote and to vote Karamoh Kabba for National Organizing Secretary at the next NDC for an in-depth understanding of the issues and with the spine to protect your votes in 2023.
