By Alpha Abu
With less than two weeks to Sierra Leone’s General Elections, the Political Parties Regulation Commission (PPRC) and the Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion (ICPNC) have in a Joint Statement, criticised the conduct of some political parties, after the two institutions’ monitoring of campaigns for a three- week period.
Their statement highlighted the use of children in front of the campaign poster of the President and Vice President singing and dancing to “profane and insulting songs’’, the pronouncement of results even when the elections were yet to take place, and the “persistent harassment and intimidation of Commissioners and personnel of the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone and other Election Management Bodies’’.
PPRC and ICPNC also took note of confrontations and disruptions of campaigns by political opponents, flouting of security directives relating to routes leading to and from designated campaign locations, resulting in confrontations that could have otherwise been avoided, and the “persistent calls for illegal protests by faceless persons and threats of unlawful disruption of the pending Polls’’.
Their joint statement said such actions could not only derail the gains the country has made but could also “weaponise segments of the Public against State institutions and officials, compromise public safety and morality’’ and stoke conflict by undermining the democratic process.
The statement also said such actions could be seen as reneging on the peace pledge that was recently signed by the leadership of the contesting Political Parties and their Presidential Candidates.
“Responding to complaints received by the PPRC from the ECSL, APC, and SLPP, bordering around the above, a dialogue meeting was convened on Friday the 9th of June 2023, with a view to Addressing those complaints and discussing all of the aforementioned emerging issues’’, part of the statement reads.
It said that ‘’inexplicably, the APC Party did not attend the meeting and it is yet to proffer an explanation to the Commission for their absence’’.
All parties contesting in the elections have been urged to roundly condemn all forms of threats ‘’to and intimidation of the ECSL and other Electoral management bodies’’.
The statement encourages parties to ‘’dissociate themselves from and denounce all calls for unlawful protests and disruption of the Polls’’, be ‘’temperate in their utterances and tolerant in their campaigns, with messages of a national character’’.
Also, parties, their leadership, and supporters have been asked to act in the spirit of the peace pledge they recently signed in Freetown.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (14/06/23)
