Democracy Held Hostage In Sierra Leone
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
What a divisive way to celebrate a divisive electoral victory: chase and beat up supporters of the All People’s Congress (APC) on the streets and in their communities; burn down their houses and cars; destroy their stalls at Abacha Street in central Freetown, and terrorize them into accepting the unacceptable elections results.
The aftermath of a questionable electoral victory by the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) has given an indication of how the next five years will look like in Sierra Leone. From the uncouth celebrations by SLPP supporters unto the physical threats against APC supporters nationwide; the country appears to be heading towards another five years of blatant human rights abuses, illegal arrests and detentions, and five more years of divisiveness amongst Sierra Leoneans.
With another five years of President Julius Maada Bio at the rudder; Sierra Leone will be going “from adding insult to injury to rubbing salt in the wound” (to quote Prince Harry from his Book: “Spare”).
President Bio will not get any better in terms of administrative shrewdness. He will become more dictatorial, and he will continue with his trademark half-truths and outright lies!
Even in his “Acceptance Address” of Tuesday 27 June 2023, following the Oath of Office as president-elect, that trademark resurfaces. President Bio tells the nation that, “This has been a peaceful electoral process that has produced an incontestable result that truly reflects the will of the people….” That statement appears to be a blatant lie. The electoral processes were fraught with irregularities and lack of transparency to the extent that the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) is still calling on the “Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone [ECSL] to promptly publish disaggregated results data at polling station level, to ensure transparency and public scrutiny”.
Numerous international elections observation missions, which were present in countless polling stations nationwide, have also highlighted, and still highlighting, “statistical inconsistencies between the first and second batch of presidential results published by the…ECSL on 26 and 27 June, respectively (to quote the EU EOM)”. Even a “Joint Statement” by Sierra Leone’s Development Partners (U.S., UK, Ireland, Germany, France and EU Delegation), dated Wednesday 28 June 2023, noted “significant logistical problems [which] hampered voting on election day in certain areas….[and] the lack of transparency in the tabulation process”.
Yet, President Bio audaciously told the nation last Tuesday that the Presidential Election result, which the Chief Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh announced, “truly reflects the will of the people”. But how can it “truly reflects the will of the people” when the EU EOM is accusing the ECSL “of inconsistencies, and lack of integrity in most of the key activities of the election including the tabulation of results”? How can it “truly reflects the will of the people” when the Carter Center observers reported that the tabulation process “lacked adequate levels of transparency”, noting that they also observed “instances of broken seals and inappropriately open ballot boxes” in some tally centers”? And how can that Presidential Election result “truly reflects the will of the people” when the ECSL is still refusing to publish detailed “results at the polling station level to allow for cross-verification in accordance with international best practice”?
Additionally, the National Election Watch (NEW), an independent coalition of Civic and Non-Governmental Organizations, has clearly highlighted how Democracy has been held hostage in Sierra Leone. In its “27 June 2023– Independent Non-Partisan Assessment Of Presidential Election Results Statement”, it noted that if the Presidential Election was conducted fairly and freely “no candidate should have met the constitutional threshold of 55% to avoid a runoff” at the first ballot. According to its Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology, President Bio “…should [have] receive[d] between 47.7% and 53.1% (a point estimate of 50.4% with a margin of error of +/- 2.7%) of the vote while ECSL’s official result puts it at 56.1%” and that Dr Samura Kamara “…should [have] receive[d] between 43.8% and 49.2% (a point estimate of 46.5% with a margin of error of +/- 2.7%) of the vote while ECSL’s official result puts it at 41.2%”,
The above clearly shows that what Mohamed Konneh and his ECSL rammed down our throats do not truly reflect the people’s will. NEW’s projections have always matched the official results of the Electoral Commission as were the cases in the 2007, 2012 and 2018 elections in Sierra Leone. So, I have no reasons to doubt its 2023 projections!
And “from adding insult to injury to rubbing salt in the wound” (Quoting Prince Harry again.), Mr Konneh and his ECSL iced their rigging cake last Saturday at the auditorium of the Freetown International Conference Centre, Aberdeen west of Freetown, when they released the cooked-up results for the elections of Mayors, District Chairpersons, Councillors, and Members of Parliament. These last sets of results are laughably tragic for Democracy in Sierra Leone. They just show that even kindergartens are good at mathematics than Mr Konneh and his ilk at the ECSL. Those results show that the ECSL had already prepared their results weeks before the actual voting took place.
And it is laughably laughable for President Bio to “extend a hand of fellowship” to those who he once referred to as “terrorists” and “insurrectionists” to join him in “the arduous task of nation building”. The first thing which I think he should have done was to have apologized to the APC and its leaders for referring to them as such. Anything short of a full unequivocal apology will be likened to a situation in which President Biden calls on members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS to join him in rebuilding Iraq and Syria!
And knowing President Bio’s modus operandi in the last five years, I don’t think he is honest when he says, in that “Acceptance Address”, that he has always “committed to being a fair leader and the President for all”. His statecraft has always shown that he is more committed to being a fair leader to his tribesmen and political party than being “the President for all” Sierra Leoneans. Has he forgotten that he once told the nation, in a local radio interview (98.1 Radio Democracy), that he was more comfortable with the work ethics of his tribesmen than other tribes in, and of, the country? President Bio has been the most divisive Head of State Sierra Leone has ever had since Independence in 1961.
With such divisive and questionable electoral victory by the SLPP; with the APC declaring “its non-participation in any level of governance, including the legislature and local councils”, and with Democracy now held hostage; Sierra Leone appears to be heading towards an apocalypse because our once-upon-a-time vocal religious leaders and Civil Society activists have been compromised!
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