By Joseph L. Kamara
There are fears that Serra Leone’s National Electoral Commission (NEC) will be redundant if a draft bill on civil registration is sent to parliament.
“THE NATIONAL CIVIL REGISTRATION ACT, 2015” proposes, among other things, a centralized registration body. But opposition political parties, the NEC, and civil society organizations are worried that voter registration, which will now be done by an “autonomous” body once the bill is enacted, will not be credible.
NEC’s Acting Executive Secretary Edmond Sylvester Alpha said at a one-day consultative meeting on Wednesday in Freetown that they were worried their role of conducting public elections would be undermined and the elections would have high credibility problems if the bill became law and another body took over registration of voters.
“When you take a look at this bill, you will realise that reference to NEC is very scanty,” he said, adding that they were going to challenge the bill in public forums “so that posterity will judge us.”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) drafted the bill, which it intends to introduce in Parliament in a few weeks.
Crucially, the bill suggests the establishment of a National Civil Registration Authority which will provide a nationally integrated database system of information about demographic distribution. Data will therefore now be extracted by NEC and other public institutions from a register that the authority will provide.
Minister of Internal Affairs Joseph Bandabla Dauda said at the consultative forum held at the Bank of Sierra Leone Complex in Kingtom that government had approved a “National Policy on Civil Registration” and it had adopted “a series of measures with clear purpose of establishing an Integrated National Civil Registration System in the country.”
He said some of the measures that had already been taken were to introduce a multi-purpose national identity card that would be used for voting at public elections, and to provide a national voter register that would be extracted by NEC from the “Integrated National Civil Register.
“At a stakeholders’ Validation Workshop on Wednesday, 5th August 2015 the Draft National Civil Registration Bill was discussed and adopted with amendments to be included in the final Bill. The Bill when finally enacted will replace the existing haphazard laws and regulations which will often cause confusion in the civil registration system,” the minister stated.
Wednesday`s forum was convened by the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC), the regulatory body of the country’s eleven political parties, to hear their views and those of the civil society and other public agencies.
But NEC’s Acting Executive Secretary, who was representing his institution, was not included in the meeting’s agenda nor was he called to talk, though invited, until he forced himself into the agenda.
Aggrieved by that exclusion, Alpha said NEC had before made suggestions to the MIA, but many had still not been incorporated into the bill and they were worried it would be introduced in Parliament in a couple of weeks.
The bill does not make much direct reference to NEC and its functions, but, if enacted, it will repeal significant provisions of the Public Elections Act, 2012, which empowers the electoral body to conduct voter registrations and public elections.
“We have our fears because comes extraction time somebody somewhere might say – we don’t know – somebody said the system is down. And we don’t want to find ourselves in a situation where in the system is down,” Alpha told Politico an exclusive interview.
The bill proposes the formulation, reviewing and implementation of policies relating to civil registration to be done by the minister of Internal Affairs.
The NEC representative said the bill confers too much of power on the Internal Affairs minister. But Minister Bandabla Dauda himself also told Politico that they had decided to give those powers to “National Civil Registration Authority”.
All but one political party – the ruling All People’s Congress – condemned the introduction of the bill in Parliament. They complained that there had not been appropriate inclusion.
Philip Tetema Tondoneh, Acting Publicity Secretary of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party, said the process of having the bill enacted was being rushed, even though it was initiated by the minister in 2010.
Cornelius Deveaux, Deputy Publicity Secretary II of the ruling party, disagreed with Tondoneh, blaming the display of misgivings of the other parties on their alleged failure to read the bill well enough.
Members of the civil society also condemned the introduction of the draft bill in Parliament without much inclusiveness.
“Since we were not involved at the start, we see it as being rushed,” said Abdul Karim Habid of Network Movement for Democratic Human Rights.
In Sierra Leone, bills initiated by government ministers and approval of government appointees, once taken to Parliament, have always gone in favour of government.
Local council elections in Sierra Leone were scheduled for dates in 2016 and presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, but there have been indications from NEC that the elections would be held on later dates.
(C) Politico Online 16/10/15
