The National Electoral Commission (NEC) in collaboration with the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC) and the National Commission for Democracy (NCD), has held a meeting with paramount chiefs in the northern headquarter town of Makeni.
The purpose was to interact with the chiefs and to chart the way forward in ensuring smooth elections.
The three-week long voters’ registration exercise has ended and now NEC, PPRC and NCD are working together to make sure that all other issues pertaining to the elections are properly addressed.
In this regard, the NEC PPRC and NCD jointly organized a meeting with paramount chiefs to seek their support in ensuring successful elections come July 2007.
The chairman NCD, George Coleridge Taylor, underscored the importance of the meeting which was meant to exchange ideas and to seek assistance from the paramount chiefs in order to promote a peaceful and credible electioneering process. He said they should ensure a level playing field for all political parties.
PPRC’s commissioner, Muctarr Williams, noted that the commission was set up in 2005 with the objective of registering political parties, monitor and supervise their activities in the discharge of their duties electioneer process.
The commissioner of NCD, Georgette de Marke, challenged paramount chiefs to encourage women to vote.
She spoke about the 50/50 document that was geared towards ensuring full female participation in governance, adding that “more than half of Sierra Leone’s population are women and therefore need to be encouraged to participate fully”.
The Electoral Commissioner Western Urban, Daphne Olu Williams, disclosed that “the general population census data for Bombali district is 408,390”, and according to her “the expected figure of registrants which the commission has projected is 204,195(50%) as at day 14 of the registration process, data centre has recorded 141,447 registrants for Bombali Distric”.
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