PRESIDENT Julius Maada Bio has been settling down to the business of governing in Sierra Leone even though members of the main opposition party are refusing to take their seats in parliament because they claim that the result of the June 24 presidential election was inconclusive.
Bio has been sworn in as president, and is going ahead with ministerial and other appointments while rumblings from the opposition All People’s Congress continue.
The party’s 54 elected MPs have boycotted parliament even though the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL), the final arbiter of the election, has confirmed Bio’s victory.
While presenting the Commission’s 2022 Annual Report to Bio last week, the Chairman and National Returning Officer of the ECSL, Mohamed Konneh, said the presidential and parliamentary elections were ‘peaceful and credible’ due to ‘diligent planning in 2022’.
He said the results reflected ‘the expressions of Sierra Leoneans who voted’.
Konneh added: ‘The year 2022 ended on a very sound footing and laid the foundation for the positive outcome of the June 24, 2023, multi-tier elections.’
He said the report ‘highlights key milestones on achievements made by the Commission…in line with [its] strategic plan that led to the announcement of the election date, legal reform, and voter registration’.
On Monday, the ECSL issued a press statement that said the government provided 90 per cent of the funding for the elections, with the rest coming from ‘multilateral partners…to support civil society organisations and complementary activities like voter education and inclusion’.
‘All these activities led to the large voter turnout observed across the country,’ the statement said.
On the issue of foreign election observers and what they thought of the elections, the ECSL noted that it was being urged ‘to take action that do not fall under the laws of Sierra Leone’
‘The Commission will consider recommendations from the Observer Missions that will add value to the electioneering processes,’ the statement said.
‘All such actions of the ECSL, prior to, during, and in [this] post-election period, have been strictly guided by national statutes and local and international best practices,’ the statement said.
But the ECSL admitted that there were ‘some technical challenges and capacity issues during the electioneering process’.
It said these would be taken up during a review of the procedures ‘as we seek to strengthen our institution to make it more responsive and more robust’.
The ESCL said it had 90,000 personnel manning over 11,000 polling stations countrywide on June 24.
Responding to claims that the ECSL was ‘placed under duress’ by Bio and members of his Sierra Leone People’s Party government, the Commission said that ‘at no point in time’ did this happen.
‘Suggested claims of that nature by misinformed person on social media are malicious and dangerous to our democracy,’ the statement said.
‘The ECSL is concerned about the complicity of our partners, as such harmful misinformation can affect the peace, which Sierra Leoneans continue to experience after the elections.,
