EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
2018 elections was transparent and inclusive-NEC Boss
Political parties have alleged that the just concluded elections were marred with irregularities. This has led to several court cases. The man at the top Mohamed N’fah Alie Conteh had a tough job. He spoke exclusively to Zainab Iyamide Joaque.
Awoko: Can you briefly tell us about some of the challenges you encountered in organizing the last general elections?
N’fah Alie: Well thank you very much, the 2018 elections was a process. It started with us having the Strategic Plan 2015 to 2019. We had key areas like the boundary delimitation, voter registration and electoral processes itself. The challenges were so many, for now it is not even easy to describe them. Right from the start there were challenges, but for me the key challenges were, you have some people who didn’t want the elections to be held, that is from the start; problems of announcing dates, boundary delimitation, voters registration etc. But we thank the Almighty God and with the support of the Commissioners, management and staff of NEC and well-meaning Sierra Leoneans including Civil Society Organisations we were able to surmount the challenges, but they were indeed many.
Awoko: What are some of the practical changes that you brought into the 2018 elections, which were not in the 2012 elections?
N’fah Alie: They are many, but the key ones are transparency itself, the 2018 elections were very transparent and very inclusive – included in virtually every area, then also I listened a lot to the concerns of every political parties, as you find out in the last stages we had a lot of recount, investigations, because as they brought in their concerns, I was able to convince my colleagues to listen to their concerns and we looked into the concerns, that in itself is also unique.
I also said it is inclusive, for instance the boundary delimitation that is establishing new Constituencies and Wards, I was able to set up a boundary delimitation monitoring committee which included all major stakeholders in all the political parties, CSOs, the Police, Members of Parliament amongst others … they were there throughout the process to monitor us, because boundary delimitation is a complex and political process, so we needed people from outside to take a look at what we are doing and judge us.
I listened a lot to CSOs, because I know that in modern times it is difficult for you to conduct an election without the input of CSOs, not all CSOs because some of them were clearly partisan. We have some credible CSOs like National Elections Watch (NEW), the Consortium, Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) to me they are really very credible and also the media of course apart from CSOs, we listened a lot.
Awoko: When you were told the High Court had stopped the run-off elections, what were your first thoughts?
N’fah Alie: Ahh I said oh…it was like the last attempt to actually derail the entire process, honestly, because I tell you there was no need for that injunction and no need to have even gone to court. We still believe that the High Court hadn’t the jurisdiction to deal with that matter. That’s our belief and we stand by it, especially to deal with presidential matter we believe it should have gone to Supreme Court but in any case we are still with the Supreme Court and that also was devastating.
It costs us not less than $2million dollars, because we were at the tail end of the process when we were stopped. We were doing training, we had hired over 400 vehicles then we were stopped. It cost this government, NEC, donor partners not less than $2million.
Question: Do you think the court will ask the Plaintiff to pay this cost as your lawyers have asked?
N’fah Alie: That’s left with the court, the matter is still there, if they give the cost then we have no alternative to pursue that one to its logical conclusion because that is waste of state resources and we will not allow that.
Question: But if the Court refuses to grant NEC the cost?
N’fah Alie: We will still pursue it, by taking the matter to Court again then the Court will decide.
Question: The political parties complained of irregularities during the first rounds of the elections, do you agree that there were irregularities. If so, to what extent do you feel they were enough to affect the result which you finally arrived at?
N’fah Alie: Well in any elections in an emerging democracy, I agree that there were some irregularities but let’s don’t forget they are different from fraud … but there are some irregularities that are so small that they didn’t have any effect on the overall elections results. They were so small, honestly.
Questions: There are still questions of the high rate of invalid votes, do you feel that maybe in hindsight there should have been more voter education done before the elections?
N’fah Alie: Yes, we agree that there is need for more voter education, but the high rate of invalid votes in the first rounds reduced greatly in the second rounds. I agree that there is always need to do voter education, honestly voter education is not easy to do because you do it based on the electoral activities that you are embarking on, when you are doing boundary delimitation you can’t do voter education on registration you do it on boundary, it should be specific and honestly it should be ongoing throughout but funding is a problem also, but I agree that there is need to do a robust voter education throughout the year
Question: Do you think civic education should be introduced in schools which includes voter education?
N’fah Alie: Well yes I agree that our curriculum in the schools especially Social Studies aspect for civic education to be included and even some aspect of electoral education, it should be like a curriculum.
Question: They say uneasy lies the head that carries the load, did you at any time during the high pressure period between the announcement of results and the run-off contemplate resigning?
N’fah Alie: I told you that there were a lot of challenges, at some point in time, honestly speaking I thought that what I went through I do not deserve it. People said a whole lot of things and ill things against me but they were all lies, it was a whole stage managed thing to actually discredit me. They said I was incompetent, how can I be incompetent and I have spent not less than 27 years here at senior management level, I have written not less than four books on elections in this country and no one else has done that.
Yes indeed, at some point in time, I thought like giving up but I also had the second thought and said ohh, if I give up my detractors would have succeeded and would have plunged this country into more chaos and I don’t think Sierra Leoneans would have forgiven me. So I held on and I knew that I had God’s support and also meaningful Sierra Leoneans, and that it was just a fraction of people who wanted actually to try and destroy me, some of them were actually in power and I can’t hide that one. They had money and power and they thought … I mean they should embarrass me, honestly I was not embarrassed, I felt it actually but, I just thought that’s the way and I should work for my country.
Question: What is the current status of the police investigations? Do you have any of your permanent staff indicted?
N’fah Alie: Yes, there are some staff under investigations I can’t really give you the details , but for our permanent staff we believe some of them were just arrested for no just cause, not all of them, but most of them were just arrested for merely doing their job. To this day no permanent staff have been charged to Court.
Some of our NEC staff were also arrested, to us we believe that it was politically motivated, some of them they didn’t deserve to go to the cells, even our senior staff … one of our election officer was put behind bars for not less than ten days, all of these cases we believe were politically motivated.
Question: This is the cooling-off period for NEC until 2023, what will you be doing?
N’fah Alie: Well… I still have up to February 2020 here, right and as a Commission for now we want to do post elections retreat so we share experience with all the staff and with key stakeholders and see what worked or didn’t, what were the experiences and we also want to do an elections report, we want to write a comprehensive report on the 2018 electoral process, so those are the activities lined up.
So as I said I am here up to 2020, but I am giving it a thought whether I’ll be here or I will end that term because I don’t want to go through what I went through unnecessarily throughout the process.
Awoko: Thank you very much Sir
N’fah Alie: You are welcome
Wednesday April 18, 2018.
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