President Koroma’s Non-Electoral Violence Message

Concord Times (Freetown)

John Momoh

27 July 2011

opinion

Freetown — The President, His Excellency Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, struck an important point at the official opening of the headquarter building of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) at Tower Hill when in a simple and clear language stated that: ‘Elections are not a matter of life and death, but a healthy competition.’ This statement is never a novelty in contemporary politics in this country as throughout the 11 years governance of the opposition SLPP, ex-President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah used to repeatedly preach the same message of political tolerance and the need to refrain from electoral violence.

It is very important that President Koroma has equally raised this point especially when elections are just a click away. In the words of Kabbah, elections in this country should be like a friendly contest. Despite the shortcomings, Kabbah’s SLPP regime in collaboration with the international community especially the United Nations Peacekeeping Force that was deployed on the ground, worked unrelentingly to ensure that the holding of elections were done in a peaceful and violent-free manner up to the time that the 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary elections that were equally acclaimed by international observers and the media to have been held in a violent-free atmosphere.

Although the President’s remark did not elaborate on other vital attributes that can make an election free, fair and credible, there is a need for the NEC and other stakeholders in the process to analyze transparent and credible elections not only from the perspectives of violent-free. This is because there are lots of behind-the-scene and in-house events that can also bundle up to derail the credibility and transparency of an election. This includes: the unjustifiable delays in announcing the results of the election, bribe scandals involving NEC personnel, the miscalculation of the election results or during the computing of the results, excess votes disproportionate to the number of registered voters in a given polling station or constituency etc.

The NEC Commissioner Dr. Christiana Thorpe is very often decried by certain individuals or political parties when things or results do not work in their favour. But elections are generally like that, as in every election there must be losers and winners. What is worth noting is that apart from NEC the transparency of elections depends on all stakeholders including the electorates, the political parties, the international donor community and the government of the day. Politicians and their parties have an obligation to behave in a decent, tolerant and law-abiding manner that takes cognisance of mutual respect for each other’s views beyond party parochialism.

The availability of the NEC headquarter-building, strategically located on Tower Hill, the citadel of the nation’s democracy process considering that all the three branches of government such as the Executive, the Parliament and the Judiciary are all located there, is a fulfillment of one of the 7 road-maps in improving the electoral system in the country that was proposed by Dr. Thorpe at a press conference few weeks after taking over as head of the NEC few years ago.

What is equally essential is that while located in a convenient working environment it is obviously expected that to whom much is given, much should be expected. It is expected that the NEC should continue to resist every attempt to be influenced by political parties, and every effort should be deployed to adhere to playing the role of an independent and impartial referee in the interest of all political parties. That is to state that no registered political party competing in any election should have an added advantage over the others. The NEC should be a trailblazer in the pursuit of a level political playing-field in the interest of all competing parties.

What is interesting is that on one or two occasions Dr. Thorpe had in a speech referred to the experience she had accumulated as head of NEC over the years. Indeed in politics nothing should be taken for granted. Thus even the experience on the job of every professional counts a whole lot. Most politicians in the country interviewed are happy over the attainment of such experience and are hoping that such would pave the way for the NEC as an institution to avoid errors that can provoke discontent such as the cancellation of election results and the wiping off of results from the computers; something that even legal minded laymen can consider as a destruction of evidence.

Certainly the mandate and role of the NEC are to serve in the interest of all contesting political parties and candidates. One observer of the last 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary elections told this writer that the next time around the NEC should make sure that if there are for example 2,000 registered voters in a given constituency, it would not be possible that the election results reflect 2,000 registered voters having cast their ballots. This is because one should also consider other pertinent factors such as voter apathy, laziness, death or travel being the cause for some of that number showing themselves up to cast their ballots.

Indeed since assuming functions, the NEC boss has been able to conduct Local Council and Paramount Chieftaincy by-elections to the satisfaction of the SLPP, APC, PMDC, NDA officials and the general public thereby lending credence to the experience optimism. Many people can still recall when during one by-election conducted in the country the results turned out with the SLPP candidate clinching victory in an SLPP stronghold in the South and the APC party candidate gaining victory in the ruling party’s Northern stronghold, while no seats were secured by either the PMDC nor the NDA. Such a result which brought smiles on the faces of both SLPP and APC party stalwarts was quite expected, given the degree of political mobilization. But even at that political support is not static but elastic as one party’s stronghold may become that of another in another election.

To exercise the role of an impartial NEC and political parties refraining from violence and cheating of opponents should be a patriotic obligation on every Sierra Leonean. The NEC must be given the free-hand to operate without any form of manipulation from whatever source.

This is why some politicians are hinting around that as much as this country is in dire need of financial assistance and donor support to the Commission to perform its functions, such assistance can only be accepted if not linked to donors being placed in strategic positions within the NEC structure that can tempt them to manipulate the results of the elections. Thus measures should be taken to ensure that donor assistance to the NEC can only be accepted when such does not infringe on the sovereignty of the state, and the rights of Sierra Leoneans to choose and elect their leaders in a free, transparent and democratic manner.

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