Election Investigation Committee (EIC) presents last a chance for the main opposition, All People’s Congress (APC) regarding its victory in June 24, 2023. Before this time, the party’s flag-bearer and presidential candidate, Dr Samura Kamara made several assurances to his party comrades and supporters that APC would victorious and the votes would be protected but all ended in failure.
President Julius Maada Bio and the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) as well as staunch members of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) will always have their way with contemptuous attitude towards the APC leader who many see as one who does not where he is going.
Now the EIC is here to look into what happened in the elections, why did happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.
This is a real platform for Samura Kamara to show his steadfastness, and if he misses this time, it is a miss forever as he would pack his bags and say bye to the party.
The EIC is a product of a communique signed between the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and APC in a peace deal brokered by the Commonwealth, ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States) and the African Union.
The communique states in Resolution-3 that “…the President, in consultation with the APC, will constitute a Cross-Party Committee on Electoral Systems and Management Bodies Review with a three-way leadership nominated by the government of Sierra Leone, the APC and development partners.”
The committee shall be charged with the responsibility of examining the electoral systems, structures, processes of the 2023 multi-tier electoral cycle.
The committee will also be informed by previous elections with a view to highlighting and addressing contentious issues of elections and results management.
Particular attention will be paid to the collation, verification, authentication and publishing of electoral data consistent with international best practice to enhance the credibility of all future elections in Sierra Leone that guarantees elections to be free, fair and credible.
The terms and reference of the committee, according to the communique, will be developed under the joint leadership of the committee within 30 days.
The committee’s duration shall not exceed six months and the committee’s recommendations shall be “actionable” and “implementable.”
The battle line has been drawn and it is one that APC’s leader must boldly cross since it has been established by local and international election observation missions that Bio did not win the elections.
Credible sources also indicated that Samura Kamara won the elections if credible results are published.
Kamara, on several occasions, has shot and missed targets on the SLPP, a move that cost APC’s victory in the June Polls.
On the election’s eve, Kamara raised what many say legitimate concerns on the conduct and supervision of the June multi-tier elections and wanted to see them addressed.
The printing of substandard and faceless voter identity cards, the manipulation of the electoral laws, procedures and processes, non-publication of the electoral register, police and military brutality and the list goes on.
The ECSL got about US$11m the equivalent of approximately Le20 trillion to print quality voter identity cards, procure election materials and to spend on other electoral activities.
As if nothing would come out of it, the ESCSL Chief printed less quality, black-and-white and photoless voter identity cards to be used in voting, an act deemed to be one of the worst forms of corruption ever recorded in Sierra Leone.
No one knows into whose pocket the money has gone or what exercise or activity funded, and no government official not even President Bio or the anti-graft boss, Francis Ben Keifala questioned him.
As impunity remains deeply ingrained into the Sierra Leonean culture, Konneh went away with it regardless of the alarm bells that were loudly rang to see the voter ID cards reprinted as the ones made by the Liberian Government.
As he went unchecked, Konneh continued his pranks unabated knowing fully well that the army and the police were on his side.
Like nobody’s business, he manipulated and tilted the electoral environment in favour of the incumbent candidate through the enactment of bad and arbitrary laws very close to the elections.
It was in 2022 Konneh championed four major laws: the Public Elections, the Political Parties Regulation Commission, the Proportional Representation (PR) and the Local Government Acts all geared towards putting SLPP on edge of other political parties.
The most draconian and controversial all laws was the PR which nothing warranted its enactment.
Sierra Leone is not war within itself or a neighbouring country, it is never in a state of emergency and does not face any life-threatening situation begging the question why the PR system?
The words of an eminent lawyer and one of the framers of the 1991 Constitution, Dr Abdulai Osman Conteh indicate that for elections to be conducted on a PR model, a date for the polls must have been announced and there are no constituencies.
But, in the case of Sierra Leone, a date for elections was announced and there were constituencies, so why do we go in for a PR system?
Dr Conteh even went further to justify what prompted the conduct of the 1996 and 2002 elections on the PR model citing the war and the non-resettlement of communities as the main causes and prayed that may those days never come again.
Despite the strength and cogency of Conteh’s arguments, Supreme Court endorsed the PR model in what appeared a clear move to appease President Bio as he who pays the piper calls the tune. The PR model also kept smaller and newly formed political parties out of the electoral race as the 11.9 per cent population quota was just too difficult for them to contest leaving only SLPP and APC in parliament.
As if that was not enough, the ECSL chief illegally withheld the electoral register from the public despite repeated calls from APC and the public.
Whenever such demand was made by credible agencies and even members of the diplomatic community, Konneh would respond that he is not answerable to any person or authority in the conduct of the elections, and the electoral register contains personal details of voters.
Konneh’s argument is a figment of the imagination and a naked misconstrue of the constitutional provision that says “in the exercise of his functions, the Chief Electoral Commissioner shall not be subject to the direction and control of any person or authority.”
This provision is not peculiar to only Konneh but also meant for heads of such quasi-government agencies as the Sierra Leone Police, the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces, Audit Service Sierra Leone among others.
The clause also does confer absolute independence on the ECSL boss that he should not be checked when he goes off track as he has done in the election eve.
As the foundation for rigging is being laid, the army and the police were brought into the electoral fold not to protect the people but to lord it on opposition politicians and to stage a terror campaign against the voters especially in the North-West regions, APC’s strongholds. Little wonder that hundreds of voters crumbled under the barrel of the gun and the APC leader narrowly escaped assassination attempts by armed guards linked to the ruling party.
The killings and attempted assassinations constitute a wave of state-sponsored violence as no one was held to account. Amid such rough conditions, Samura Kamara led his people into the elections with an assurance that he would protect their votes, a promise that he never fulfilled.
Now, he has assured his voters again that he will take back his victory through the EIC, but if he fails again, he will answer difficult questions in the public court this time.