*By Ranger_*
The Acting Publicity Secretary of the main opposition All Peoples Congress Party has declared that APC will kick against any attempt by the Elections Commission of Sierra Leone to do boundary delimitation ahead of the national elections scheduled for May and June 2023.
Whilst stating that APC welcomes announcement of the dates for the various elections and also happy that they fall within the laws of the country in continued efforts to strengthen the country’s democracy, Sidie Yahyah Tunis said they view boundary delimitation suspiciously.
He maintained that given the election timeline and strategic plan announced by ECSL was not even supposed to have mentioned boundary delimitation which he said takes place every five or seven years with its implementation leaning on the upper limit of seven years, which should be 2024.
It is not acceptable now to conduct free, fair, acceptable elections, he said.
Registration of voters, he said, starts in September this year, with the number of voting centers having been increased by 10 percent from 3,300 to 3,600. He pointed out that boundary delimitation takes time – at least one year. The APC publicity went on to ask where it will be done.
He further stated that Government should not interfere in the work of ECSL. The data collected for Mid-term Census that was conducted by Statistics-Sierra Leone has a lot of controversy and that many people did not take part in it to make its results credible and acceptable.
Thus, he said, using it as the basis for boundary delimitation would cause controversy and chaos.
Stating that ECSL is doubted, Tunis said that looking at them closely; APC hopes that they will not continue with the exercise as, according to Tunis, it will not augur well for democracy and peace.
You do not just get up and do boundary delimitation, he reiterated, asking, where is the prototype of where it will happen?
He added that ECSL should not do its work based on what the Government wants but to serve the country so that peace and stability remain. He added that its conduct will be a hindrance to the election and a hindrance to peace and quiet.
ECSL, he said, should work transparently and fairly in the interest of this country. Nothing from SSL’s mid-term census data, Tunis said, will be acceptable.
Meanwhile, APC are of the conviction that two districts have been created by the Government in the South-East as a means of encroaching into the 2023 electoral process.
We are not going to accept anything that comes from that (SSL) data, an APC international spokesperson also said.
*(C) The Calabash Newspaper*
