Jesmed Suma
By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
A new political movement aspiring for a political party status has complained the delay in confirming its registration.
The National Progressive Democrats (NPD) blames the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC) for stalling on granting them a full party status after two years in waiting. It received its provisional registration certificate since January 16, 2016.
“We find it very appalling that it would take two years to register a political party in Sierra Leone,” said Jesmed F. Suma, founding member and Public Policy Director of NPD.
Sierra Leone is a multi party democracy. Currently there are eleven registered political parties operating in the country, the latest one being the Alliance Democratic Party (ADP).
Ten of those political parties have already seen at least one general election, with the exception of the ADP which will go into their debut poll in 2018.
According to a press release by the NPD, the delay had been caused by the commission. They claimed they had fulfilled every requirement as demanded by the commission.
NPD laments that problems like the SLPP intra party woes and the lack of quorum in the commission’s meetings have been some of the reasons cited by the PPRC as responsible for the delay in fully registering them as a political party.
When contacted by Politico, the Registrar of the PPRC, Zainab Moseray, declined to comment on the matter. She said they couldn’t comment because they’d not read the statement from the NPD, even though the release was first published on June 23.
At the moment, NDP is worried that the delay may prevent them from participating in the political process. Suma described this as an attempt at stifling democracy.
Sierra Leone is set to go in to multi tier elections in 2018 and a late registration of any new political party may seriously affect its chance of making an impact in the political landscape.
“NPD is gravely concerned that it may remain unregistered as a ‘Political Party’ at law, even though we are quite capable of efficiently participating in Sierra Leone’s electoral and political process,” the movement’s statement reads in part.
At the moment, with only a movement status, NPD cannot discuss political issues as a party because of the “gag order” the PPRC has placed on them. According to them, the last meeting that was held between its members and the PPRC was on June 7, 2016. They claimed that the commission had to cut that meeting short because there was no quorum to agree on any decision.
The NDP has also observed that there were two vacant seats on the board of the commission and noted that this had affected the decision making process.
If a quorum is not met, it is impossible for the commission to decide on whether the movement should be registered fully as a political party.
“This can be seen as an attempt to stifle the democratic process which our members are hell bent on making sure we stand up against the corrupt elements within the system that are denying the people of Sierra Leone the opportunity of an alternative to the rotten political system led by folks in both APC and SLPP,” Suma added in response to request for comments by Politico.
(C) Politico 29/06/16
