Under the international security laws, conventions and protocols, citizens of Sierra Leone have urged the international community to discipline the June 24 elections coup plotter and riggers.
Citizens have described June 24 election riggers as ‘coup plotters against the will of the people and democracy’.
According to citizens, there is no difference between military coups and that of elections coup plotters or riggers, adding that the people should not call one “election rigging” and “a coup” because the outfits are different.
They went further that whether they wear military fatigues or civilian attire, the truth remains election riggers are also coup plotters.
Citizens have referred the 2023 Sierra Leone Electoral Commission as one of the coup plotter institutions against citizens of Sierra Leone, adding that the deliberate move by ECSL to refuse to qualified voters to vote whose facial photos are unidentifiable from voting on polling day is an act of electoral coup.
Electorates have also lambasted that the procurement process of these voter Identification cards that was unilaterally and clandestinely done by the Commission and which many say opposition political parties were never involved.
According to many it was also evident that the data for thousands of citizens who had registered for June 24 elections cycle were incomplete, incorrect or missing from the register in many of these instances, citizens were not allowed to do the necessary corrections or create a fresh registration.
Opposition stakeholders have stated that the omission of some names from the provisional list of voters, photo-less registration details, incomplete data, and the lack of transparency, openness, inclusiveness of ECSL in its operations clearly suggested that the integrity of both the voter registration processes had been skewed and has thus compromised the entire electoral process thereby involving on election coup plot against citizen.
They further stated that the way and manner in which ECSL removed so-called fraudulent entries in the register, including duplicates, was never publicised to allow the public and political parties in particular to scrutinise the lists and make official objections to entries they consider either fraudulent or duplicates.
The opposition parties also raised concerns about providing electoral stakeholders’ access to scrutinise the voter lists that would satisfy the electorate and political parties that the identity documents provided by the ECSL are legitimate.
According to the opposition parties the ECSL have failed in the voter cards need to be regularised, system sanitised, and political parties be allowed to audit the system in order to know how many cards were produced, the securitised measures taken, and the names and appropriate addresses of the owners of the cards produced be published.
Because of such anomalies, after the June 24 elections, ECOWAS, EU, UK and US and other partners including the local National Elections Watch (NEW) have viewed the just concluded elections as fraudulent and not reflective of the will of the people of Sierra Leone.
NEW said the APC party won the 2023 election but that it was fraudulently diverted to the SLPP, adding that the election was conducted in more of a fraudulent way than was free, fair and credible.
Some opposition members said their APC agents were prevented from fully participating during polling day in the southeast of the country and even those officials assigned by the party to the tally centres across the regions were prevented from having access to certified figures during the tabulation process.
They also raised concerns about the manner in which the Returning Officer conducted himself where he announced results without notifying the APC party, adding that no APC stakeholders were informed before the 60% announcement of the results by ECSL Chairman Mohammed K. Konneh.
All the international observers said the election was marred with irregularities, statistical inconsistency with the tabulation process and did not reflect to the will of Sierra Leoneans.
Citizens therefore stated that those who use their power to steal the will of the electorates should not go unchecked.
They however called on EU, UK and US including ECOWAS to protect Sierra Leone democracy and bring elections riggers that electorates considered as ‘election coup plotters against civilians’ to law.
‘Arrest and indicts elections coup plotters on international laws’ they demanded.