By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
An official of the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL) at the Ministry of Information and Communications weekly press briefing in Freetown commended the electoral reforms contained in the Public Elections Act 2012 that was submitted to Parliament that saw the light of the day.
The Director of Legal Affairs at ECSL, Fatoma Fabundeh said after the multi-tier elections of 2007, the elections observation mission and stakeholders in the electoral process gave recommendations regarding the polls. He said one of the key recommendations was for the electoral laws of the country to match international standards.
He said the reformation process started after 2017 and a bid was submitted to Parliament for it to be enacted into law. “So we were bound to conduct the 2018 elections with the 2012 Act,’’ he said.
“So we started the reformation in 2019 by hiring an international legal expert from Malawi,’’ he went on.
He noted that in a conference they held at Brookfields hotel in 2021, they submitted their initial findings to stakeholders of the electoral process, with some of them based on section 32 subsection 2 of the 1991 constitution that provides for the number of electoral commissioners and section 32 subsection 8 for the establishing of the electoral commission for Sierra Leone.
Fabundeh stated that sub-section 2 of the constitution provides that the Chairman and Chief Electoral Commissioner and the other 4 personnel shall be electoral commissioners. He said that there was need for these provisions to be amended when another region was created in 2017 by the then government.
‘’We were not able to do any constitutional amendment but instead, we went into the elections without having an electoral commissioner for the North-Western region which in the spirit of the law does not have anything to write home about,’’ he said.
He added that, after the conduct of the 2018 elections, it was mandatory for the commission to provide for the appointment of an electoral commissioner for the North-Western Region. He said the amendment of section 32 sub-section 2 of the constitution that was submitted to Parliament provides that the electoral commissioner can be removed from office for misbehavior.
The ECSL Legal Affairs Director noted that the provision in the Public Elections Act of 2012 was that the electoral commissioner was to be removed for gross misconduct among other things.
“When you compare misbehavior and gross misconduct, gross misconduct is of graver reasons for removing electoral commissioner. So as a reason to provide an enabling environment for commissioners to do their mandated functions, it was incumbent on the electoral commission to also provide for the amendment of that provision so that it can be in line with the constitution,’’ he said.
He reaffirmed that as misconduct is graver, they therefore recommended misbehavior to replace misconduct but both of them saw the light of the day, and were amended. He added that another amendment that they recommended was the time frame to resign in office before contesting any elections which is 6 months, instead of 12.
‘’But the electoral observation mission said that it was discriminatory that there are other Sierra Leoneans that may want to contest elections who are civil servants. So It was advised to still remain 12 months,’’ he said.
He said the recommendation that talks of dual citizenship was approved and that they should contest only at Parliamentary level but not Presidential.
Fabundeh noted that the constitution does not provide for a fixed elections date which he said was only a statutory instrument, though he said they recommended it for the presidential, parliamentary, and local council elections. He said when the issue of fixed elections date was tabled in parliament, one school of thought was in favor, while the other called for a constitutional amendment but they ended agreeing to continue with the already announced 2023 elections date and wait for 2028.
ECSL is the sole authority with the constitutional mandate to prepare and conduct all public elections and referenda.
