Now that the tripartite process is on its last and final lap; now that certain demands behind the scenes have and are being made of the ruling Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) Government, the Electoral Commission and the President, not limited to the production of the RRFs and raw voting data, there is now talk that the tripartite report presented to the President is separate from the divergent and convergent issues.
To clarify the matter, the Challenger in the Presidential Election and Party Leader and flagbearer of the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC), Dr. Samura Kamara, has now said misconceptions around the matter, warrants correction.
Be it as it may, there have always been misconceptions about the Tripartite Committee and the reports that were supposed to result from its findings and what the final implication of those reports mean to the ruling and main opposition parties. But more especially, what do the reports mean in relation to who actually won the 24 June, 2023 Presidential Election regardless of the result that was declared cockishly by the Chief Electoral Commissioner.
The blame can be levied on both sides of the contention. On the APC side, Dr. Samura Kamara and his team before the submission of the parties’ tripartite report to the President on 1st July, 2024, missed out on several opportunities to explain what the tripartite process meant in detail to the people and his supporters. On the side of the ruling party government, the tripartite process is a snare and they don’t want any clarification of the true implications of the recommendations in the report. Misconceptions still plague the process with social media commentators and bloggers all having a say on what they think or feel that’s mostly said in support of their candidate in the last presidential election. But all of this now is water under the bridge.
The fact of the matter is that, all the recommendations that will come out of the tripartite process, including the 80 agreed recommendations, and those from the international community, that will address the electoral justice aspect of the process in relation to who actually won and what should be done hence, at the end of the day, “shall be actionable and implantable”.
Now that the process is on its last and final lap; now that certain behind the scenes demands have and are being made of the ruling SLPP government, the electoral commission and the president not limited to their production of the RRFs they tallied, there is now talk that the tripartite report presented to the president is separate from the divergent and convergent areas.
It must be stated that the divergent issues, those the SLPP government and the APC are in disagreement with, are reflected in the Tripartite Committee’s Report comprising two divergent perspectives: one submitted by the APC and the other by the SLPP representatives. Both parties agreed that the country’s electoral processes needed some work done and should be reviewed, making up the convergent issues.
As stated on page 53 of the Report, the APC holds that statistical inconsistencies call into question the results declared by the ECSL and demands a re-run of the 2023 elections to be facilitated by the ECOWAS Commission, and the immediate resignation of personnel of the Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs). The government on the other hand, maintains that the results as declared by the ECSL are valid. These divergent positions are fully articulated in the respective analyses annexed to the Tripartite Report.
This diversity and other very important contentious issues, including ensuring the transparency and credibility of electoral processes, addressing the legal framework governing elections, and accountability and improving the operational efficiency of the ECSL, remain unresolved.
Attempting to clarify this misconception that the aforementioned issues are separate from the report submitted to the President, Dr. Samura Kamara, in a social media post, said, “A thorough examination of the report reveals that the divergent issues are not relegated to the appendices. They are part of the main body that presents a cohesive and unified narrative which is consistent with standard reporting practices where dissenting opinions or alternative perspectives are included as complementary material to provide a comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand.”
The fact that the extant issues are presented in the main body of the report, and not as afterthoughts in the appendices, means that they will be addressed and implemented. There is already directive for a Tripartite Secretariat to be set up in the House to ensure the implementation of the 80 recommendations, and those from the international community. The contentious issues are not just important; they are crucial for the integrity and future of our democratic process.
In an earlier speech on the submission of the tripartite report, Dr Samura Kamara said: “We are fully committed to resolving them (the divergent and convergent issues) in a manner that upholds the principles of transparency, fairness, and accountability that our people deserve… I want to emphasise that the dialogue continues, and we are not relenting in our pursuit of justice and truth. What happened in Sierra Leone in June 2023 is a precedent, a very bad precedent, which, if not corrected, will be a template for future political parties to copy. In this regard, those who think that the same ECSL that conducted the disastrous 2023 elections will miraculously change and conduct a clean, credible and transparent election in 2028 are certainly dreaming. New laws will not change old, bad habits. Therefore, if the current ECSL leadership and personnel are not held accountable for the mismanagement of elections in 2023, they will surely be emboldened, and will close their ranks in order to deal the final blow on democracy in Salone.”
At the end of the process, both convergent and divergent positions shall, according to the Agreement for National Unity, be “actionable and implementable” after the international community releases their report and recommendations on the actual not the declared presidential elections result.
In closing, Dr. Samura Kamara said: “To my fellow comrades of the APC, I say that at this point, the battle for electoral justice must now be owned by all levels of leadership in the APC, from ward to constituency, from district to region, and from Samura Kamara to the party leadership. This is not a time for recrimination. It’s a time to look at the cumulative turn of events that have brought us to where we are as of now. We cannot continue to be enablers of such massive electoral fraud. If we do not unite to save democracy now, trust me, we will lose the soul of our party forever. As a party we need to demonstrate a willingness to defend the rights of our people.”