Freetown, SIERRA LEONE – In a letter submitted to the Tripartite Committee on the reform of electoral practices the local think-tank Institute for Governance Reform has presented five thought-provoking recommendations.
Key amongst these was the data showing how regionally biased the two leading political parties have been in putting forward candidates for leadership of the country from independence up to the present day. IGR also called for a transition law to make way for a more amicable transfer of executive power whilst giving time for the courts to respect the right of candidates to challenge the results before the winner is sworn in rather than after assuming the Presidency. Here is the letter:-
30th May 2024
Addressed to:
The Co-Chairs and Members of the Tripartite Committee on Electoral Reform New Brookfields Hotel
New England, Freetown
Dear Co-Chairs and Members of the Tripartite Committee on Electoral Reform,
Recommendations for Electoral Reform and Inclusive Governance
I write this letter for and on behalf of the Institute for Governance Reform to thank you for inviting us and other civil society groups to share our thoughts on the challenges facing elections and recommend ways for more inclusive, freer, fairer, and peaceful elections in Sierra Leone.
As discussed with your panel, Sierra Leone has had some problems with all previous elections, including those declared free and fair by local and international observers. It is in recognition of these imperfections and the need to make elections more open and peaceful that we see the protest by the main opposition APC over the recent elections and the response by the Government and international partners in establishing a Tripartite Committee on electoral reform as a good opportunity for a deeper and honest reflection on improvement.
Co-Chairs and Esteemed Members, our work on governance reform over the years opened our eyes to the profound need for the Tripartite Committee’s work on Electoral Reform. For instance, results of multiple surveys and studies on governance and elections show that even with the best of intent by Election Management Bodies to deliver clean elections, the political culture of winner-takes-all, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to do so. Political elites and supporters on both sides want the rules of the game to be in their favour, and so, hiring thousands of Sierra Leoneans to manage and monitor elections always comes with a barrage of special interests to manage.
Considering the above, we should be equally worried that the work of the Committee will end up in a tussle over personal calculations by political interest groups and not the wider interest of society. It is in light of this concern that I ask that you permit me to make our recommendations open to the public, to ensure that political party supporters see, understand, and utilise our suggested reform proposals in their direct engagement with esteemed members of the Tripartite Committee.
The Context … The Evolution of the Political and Electoral Culture of Sierra Leone
Noting that recommendations for electoral reform are equally meant to transform the political culture of a society, it is useful to understand the institutional and leadership cultures that over time have led to the predicament in which we now find ourselves. To do this, we present the table below showing the backgrounds of all presidential candidates in Sierra Leone’s eleven presidential and parliamentary elections since independence. The table confirms a widely known fact, that Sierra Leone’s two leading political parties have largely drawn candidates from party stronghold districts and regions since independence. In fact, the APC has never chosen a party leader outside the Northern region, and in all six elections since Sierra Leone’s return to multiparty elections, all of the party’s presidential candidates are drawn from one area, Bombali1. This long-term leadership recruitment pattern only from party strongholds has succeeded in institutionalising an awful belief that ethnic identity and
1 Bombali district was de-amalgamated in 2017 and some of its Chiefdoms such as Sanda Loko (Samura Kamara’s hometown) became the headquarters of a district known as Karene, regional groups are tied to parties. A system of party organization and voting patterns have evolved over time in congruence with a state management culture that has been largely unfair to opposition areas. This has produced distrust and deepened inequality over time placing the citizen’s psychological health and social cohesion under immense strain.
Jimmy Kandeh’s “Politicization of Ethnic Identities in Sierra Leone” gives a useful account of how our harmful identity politics has evolved. APC’s longest-serving leader, President Siaka Stevens who was also a co-founder of SLPP in 1951, launched his party in 1960 through waging a successful campaign on perceived unfairness towards ethnic groups in northern Sierra Leone under SLPP’s Sir Albert Margai. Similarly, after years of one-party dictatorship, Foday Sankoh, leader of the rebel group RUF, successfully exploited the grievances of groups in the South and East against perceived unfair treatment under the APC to launch the rebellion using SLPP’s Kailahun as Sierra Leone’s weakest point of entry. These evolving grievances of the past continue to shape present-day politics making it very difficult to achieve national consensus on development.
Co-Chairs and Esteemed Members, there are genuine fears that if there are no recommendations for tackling these issues at the end of your committee’s work, it will appear as if the Tripartite team is normalizing the decades of ordeals Sierra Leoneans have experienced including the unfair treatment of citizens believed to be opposition supporters, as well as fortifying a political culture where key democratic institutions including the police, courts, central statistics office and bodies responsible for managing elections are mobilized for governing party agendas.
In seeking solutions to inclusivity and political stability, we bring for your consideration Birch Et Al’s four globally acknowledged factors that elevate the risk of electoral violence and electoral fraud: 1) a highly competitive election that could shift the balance of power; 2) partisan divisions based on identity; 3) electoral rules that enable winning by exploiting identity cleavages; and 4) weak institutional constraints on violence, particularly security-sector bias toward one group, leading perpetrators to believe they will not be held accountable for violence. We note that all four conditions are present in Sierra Leone, and because every election is seen as a zero-sum game for entire regions, the stakes are always unmanageable. Moreover, lines are blurred between opposition demands for fairness and the attacks they wage on other identity groups believed to be unduly benefiting from the government. Sadly, years of impunity for security officials and partisans who have engaged in violence have not helped.
We propose five recommendations to address the systemic political violence and injustices as well as to promote electoral integrity.
Recommendations for improving elections
- Make the Sierra Leone Police and justice system more accountable: Elections and governance will be more secure if partisans who are tempted to act violently know they will be held accountable, even if their party is in power. CSO reports on political violence have fallen on deaf ears, just as the many recommendations of the Government’s own commissions of inquiry into past incidences of violent disorder. We recommend the following going forward:
GoSL undertakes a number of police and justice reforms, such as police training in violence de-escalation techniques, managing nonviolent protests, and crowd control.
GoSL to consider improving intelligence collection to help the SLP respond better to domestic threats that come through the routine exercise of citizens’ constitutional rights. Political parties to commit to having a nationally representative police force as a means of deterring both political violence and police brutality.
The justice system should deliver swift and speedy trials for credible domestic threats and as well as dissidents abroad that incite violence, even if such trials are done in absentia.
The international community should help Sierra Leone’s security and justice system to deter social media bullying and threats to peace emanating from abroad.
With requisite steps in place, the police should allow citizens to peacefully protest.
- Overcoming winner-takes-all: That political parties discriminate against regions, and that citizens have learnt to embrace hate, is all shaped by the nature of the electoral system that creates a winner-takes-all situation. To address this, we recommend the following:
Increased devolution, deconcentrating power in Freetown and deepening decentralization to ensure that local councils held by the opposition and governing parties deliver services effectively. This could over time reduce the bitterness over presidential elections.
The constituency-based system used in many elections incentivizes gerrymandering, census rigging and a “half-country strategy” by political parties. Sierra Leone needs an electoral system that will ensure minority votes matter and compels political parties to be present in all districts, and not just in the strongholds they feel entitled to. The current 11.9% threshold for winning a seat under the district block system has not adequately responded to calls for inclusivity. We recommend a proportional representation system with a lower threshold of 5% to both increase and enable the presence of political parties in areas outside their traditional districts.
Political parties are strongly encouraged to consider adopting a more national character through the rotation of their leadership among the regions and ethnic identities. No one region or group should monopolise a party that is meant to serve an entire country. This proposal is intended to help “de-tribalise and de-regionalise” elections and governance and incentivise citizens to freely join parties of their choice as well as deter elites from mobilizing identity groups to maintain power or propel themselves to leadership.
- Electoral grievances should be addressed before a new president takes an oath of office.
In the past four elections, candidates declared winners are immediately sworn into office on the day of the announcement of results. And no sooner than a new government assumes power, election petitions become useless. On two occasions, judgments on election petitions came almost at the end of the tenure of the party under contestation. This has made the courts unattractive for contesting election grievances. To address this situation, we recommend the following:
- 1. As suggested by a CSO – Legal Link on the Tripartite panel, winners of a presidential election should be sworn into office one month after the announcement of results.
- 2. Polling station’s results should be published online within 14 days after the announcement of the results.
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3.3. Once the measures above are adopted, aggrieved parties that do not take their petition to court should be given no legitimate platform to complain about electoral irregularities.
- Increase trust in the electoral process. While the 2022 Elections Act is by far the most responsive instrument to recommendations of international observer missions in previous elections, it remains vague on many issues such as the openness in tallying and counting votes, and publication of polling station data. When such crucial decisions are kept vague in the law, we are left with the decisions and feeble compromises in liaison meetings organised by the ECSL that hardly compel political parties to reform. The 2022 Elections Act failed to reassure voters despite its excellent provisions and intent. In light of this, we recommend that the following be considered to increase citizen’s trust in elections:
Like in many other African countries, the tallying process should be broadcast on national television for all Sierra Leoneans to see how their votes are counted.
A more inclusive local election observation machinery be established. The CSO election consortium supported by FCDO, previously DFID, in 2018 provides an excellent example of how local groups from diverse backgrounds can be organised to promote transparency and hold each other accountable in the business of promoting free, fair, and peaceful elections. The absence of this facility in 2023 made it difficult for CSOs to have a coordinated and credible voice on elections and election results. The NDI manual on election observation lays out clear steps on how CSOs can make sure all interest groups are represented in local election processes, including the involvement of political parties. A more inclusive and open census should be conducted with political parties and interest groups serving on technical and leadership committees overseeing the population census. To make elections meaningful, we recommend that the PPRC invests in capacity-building political parties to develop systems and competencies for policy-based campaigns and engagements, and for greater accountability to their membership.
- Establish a transition law on elections: Although Sierra Leone is credited for two peaceful transfers of power in the past 15 years, perhaps the biggest omission in Sierra Leone’s governance practices is the absence of a transition law that provides for a smooth and structured transfer of power. The bitter experiences in the transfer of power to opposition routinely resulting in the seizure of travel documents of outgoing officials by in-coming governments, imposition of travel bans and setting up of commissions of inquiry have made government transitions a nightmare. These experiences contribute to making opposition parties disruptive instead of being constructive. It is for this reason that in passing the US Presidential Transition Act of 1963, Congress explained: “Any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.” We strongly recommend that the establishment of a formal transition mechanism by way of law be the biggest legacy of the Tripartite Committee.
Co-Chairs and Esteemed Members, these recommendations are by no means an attempt to add to the already difficult challenge you have at hand. However, please accept this letter as my humble response to your request for submission of written recommendations to enhance your work. My team and I will be happy to meet with you to discuss these recommendations in detail and any other questions you might have.
Wishing you the best of luck in your endeavour Sincerely,
Andrew Lavali Executive Director