Supporting Credible Elections

Concord Times (Freetown)

With John Momoh

9 June 2011

Freetown — Sierra Leone’s record in conducting transparent and credible elections has never been so good since independence fifty years ago. At Independence the eyes of the people of this country were hardly opened to the realities of what should constitute transparent and credible elections.

It is usually expected that with time, Sierra Leone’s electoral process should have drawn nearer to maturity and fairness, as governance under Sierra Leoneans in an independent and a sovereign nation rolls on. Unfortunately maturity with time can hardly be realized over the years. Elections conducted during the rebel war era and the 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections appear to be far closer to transparency than those conducted before the war. This is because as the loopholes of one problem is filled others open up; thus creating the impression that it will be difficult to conduct transparent elections in this country, especially for the positions of Head of State and Parliamentarian. It will be difficult to pinpoint a single election that had been held in this country that had been devoid of one form of electoral flaws or the other such as: massive vote-rigging, the use of thugs to intimidate political opponents or other forms of harassment.

Certainly one can hardly talk about the reasons for electoral anomalies in this country in the decades of the 1960s to 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and in the new millennium without mentioning the power rivalry between the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), a political party that elicits most of its support from the South-Eastern regions of the country, and the All People’s Congress (APC), which started as an opposition force up to now is a bone in the flesh of the SLPP.

The power struggle between these two rival parties is a principal source of the strength of Sierra Leone’s democratic process as well as the weakness of democracy in this country. This is because the two arch-rival parties have over the years metamorphosed into two power-blocks, thereby serving as checks and balances on the excesses of each other. Many people view this attribute as an essential factor for nourishing traditional democratic process; to the extent that if one group or party is in power, the other will be playing the role of the most powerful opposition party.

The increasing strength of both the SLPP and the APC parties in Sierra Leone’s democratic dispensation is considered very important, because even in the well established democracies that many consider as role models to imitate, such as Britain and the USA, the two dominant national political parties’ format reassures continuity in the desire to achieve democratic change of leadership. That is to say that in the U.S. the Democratic and Republican parties are dominant factors in American politics, while the Labour and the Conservative parties often get the lion’s share in the British political arena.

What is however missing in Sierra Leone’s democratic dispensation is that we have not learned our lessons well over the years to attain the degree of maturity, non-violence disposition, high literacy rate, commitment to the rule of law and orienting the Electoral Commission to conduct transparent and credible elections that are universally accepted by all contestants. The degree of press freedom that is characteristic of, and a tradition in the USA and the UK is also lacking in Sierra Leone.

This is why the 3-day workshop on Electoral Operational Planning that was last week organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under its global program for electoral cycle support, held at the Taia Resort Hotel in Freetown is very timely. Its intent was not at all to discredit past elections held in this country, including those conducted by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) headed by Dr. Christiana Thorpe as chairperson, but to relay the message that although the NEC has achieved in many instances given the circumstances under which they are operating, a lot more remains to be done in improving on their operations.

Indeed the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Sierra Leone, Michael Von der Schulenberg was on the right track when he said: “Elections will only succeed if political parties and the people of a country believe in the process. It is not just a matter of political parties competing for power but believing that the competition is fair.” Certainly the fairness and transparency that the UNERSG was alluding to in his statement at the opening programme of the workshop depends on the hard-work and sincerity of all stakeholders in the process: such as the political parties, the electorate and the NEC in executing their respective responsibilities.

One of the salient weaknesses of elections in many African countries is the reliance on external budgetary support to run the process. In most instances many African governments launch appeals for help to international donor institutions and friendly governments after fixing their electoral budget estimates. In Sierra Leone for example many people are grateful to the generous support of the UN system and several friendly western governments in meeting both financial and material needs for conducting elections over the years.

The bone of contention however is that it is risky to depend on foreign budget support to bankroll elections. This is because in the event of reliance, once anomalies occur in conducting the elections fingers of blame or suspicions can sometimes be stretched towards the foreign donors. Sometimes people accuse them of having hidden hands in the manipulation of the results of the elections.

Thus it is becoming a matter of principle that in the interest of the sovereignty and pride of a country, either African governments should continue cushioning the support of friendly donors to help in conducting their elections and shut up or bear up with the outcomes of soliciting such donor supports. Unfortunately the economies of most African states are very weak to maintain the self-reliance option!

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