By Ragan M. Conteh
The Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh has stated in Freetown that a list of 600 under age registrants has been submitted to the Sierra Leone Police for action.
The ECSL confirmed this at the Freetown City Council Hall during the Sierra Leone Legal Aid Board’s celebration of International Women’s Day.
According to Konneh the 600 individuals will be arrested and interviewed by the police in the not too distant future.
He explained to the mammoth crowd that attended the celebration how his commission used the 2015 and the 2021 midterm censuses to arrive at the current parliamentary seats to be contested in the June 24 elections.
The ECSL went further that his commission has also worked on the modalities to ensure that the elections are free, fair and transparent.
Recently at the commission’s conference room, the ECSL Commissioner also confirmed that, over 50,000 double registrants have been deleted from the database.
In his statement, the Inspector General of Police William Faya Sellu said the Electoral Commission has forwarded to the police for the force to arrest the under-age registrants across the country.
According to IG Sellu anyone caught will be reprimanded until after elections.
Many who attended the meeting said the work of the commission seeming to disenfranchise Sierra Leoneans from participating in electoral processes has the tendency to encourage electoral violence.
Participants said the international community and other opposition parties should check on the work of ECSL to avoid elections rigging.
They said the ECSL has recently announced about 50,000 double registrants that had been deleted from their database, and today another 600 under-age registrants will be arrested.
Participants in the ceremony who spoke to this medium said, the ploy set up by the commission is to scare away people from collecting their voter ID cards.
‘The ploy to arrest under age registrants is an act of intimidation and a ploy to marginalise people from participating in electoral processes,’ one Mr Robert said.
Participants have called on the opposition parties to wake up and checkmate the activities of ECSL as the commission’s plot is to arrest voters in the coming weeks.
During the registration, ECSL prevented hundreds of thousands of people from registering on allegations of fake birth certificates.
Many are concerned for ECSL to be again setting up to remove 600 voters on allegations of being under-age registrants, calling for such move to be challenged.