By Abubakarr Bah
The Secretary-General of the main opposition Sierra Leone People's Party says his party will not accept the results that will be announced by the National Electoral Commission unless their concerns are “satisfactorily” addressed.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie says he is dismayed over “the irregularities” which he alleges occurred during Saturday’s
presidential, parliamentary and local council elections.
The Secretary General of the party, Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie told journalists in a press conference on Monday that the polls “were marred by several instances of fraud, malpractices and irregularities” inconsistent with the principles of the National Electoral Commission.
He said “the catalogue of malpractices and apparent unwillingness of the NEC to address them” led to the heightening of their concerns over the credibility and legitimacy of the election process. Tejan-Sie said the SLPP had “visual evidence of elections malpractices” and was gathering credible evidence to substantiate instances of deliberate collusion of certain NEC officials particularly in the northern region, Kono and the Western Area. He also said that they had video clips of NEC officials giving multiple ballot papers to APC supporters which allowed them to do multiple voting. He said several of those incidents had been reported by independent election observers and monitors like the National Elections Watch (NEW) and some of which had been confirmed by NEC.
The SLPP Scribe alleged that in Bombali and Koinadugu districts final voter registers were missing at several polling stations, adding that “NEC workers decided to create voter registers from ID cards and voter slips presented by voters”.
He pointed out that at polling stations located in the St. Edwards Secondary School in Freetown, polling staff and police officers were caught using a code word “up” instructing voters to vote for APC whose candidate was top on the ballot owing to the party's alphabetical nature. He said that at the Metro Funeral Home on Wilkinson Road, an APC operative and a NEC official were caught removing ballot papers from the station leading to open confrontation between the two parties' agents which allegedly led to the forceful removal of their agent from that polling station.
He added that in the northern region, the secrecy of voting was compromised as polling stations set up in many areas were designed in a manner that NEC officials could see how voters cast their ballot and were intimidating people perceived to be SLPP supporters.
Tejan-Sie also made allegations of ballot-stuffing by NEC officials and APC party agents in constituencies 67 and 68 as wells as intimidation and assault of
their polling agents by security personnel and government ministers across the Western Area. He said a NEC official in the Western Area was put under gun point by a police officer because she failed to compromise and allow ballot-stuffing.
He said they also received reports that SLPP agents were forced out of the Western Area and some of the Northern region Tally Centres, and urged the international community to prevail on NEC to ensure a credible outcome of the elections. He said that as a party that contributed to the hard-won peace in Sierra Leone and which believed in the rule of law, it would not want anything that could derail the peace of the country.
© Politico 20/11/12
