Over the recent recurrence of political violence in the country prior to the coming bye-election, Amnesty International Sierra Leone has declared that the Political Party Registration Commission’s (PPRC) Act should be reviewed.
Speaking to Awoko in an interview on Tuesday 28th June, the Director of the Organisation, Solomon Sogbandi, said this review should be done in order to ensure that the PPRC has more “teeth” which will enable them to levy punishment on any political party that will involve in political violence.
He went on to say that as a Commission, the Act which governs the PPRC has short comings as it lacks enforcement mechanism adding that they cannot punish political parties which fall foul of their codes of conducts.
Mr Sogbandi stated that “political violence is not something that should be cherished in the country due to our experience of the past civil war.” He furthered that political violence results in insecurity which make it dangerous.
The Director said that as an organisation, they want to see internal democracies within political parties in terms of governance system. He said, “We want to see to what extent they too can have rules of engagement, how they ensure that they abide by these rules in order to ensure that they bring sanity within their political parties”.
He added that “political parties are governance in waiting”, noting that bringing chaos into their parties will not leave the public with any confidence of their ability to rule them.
As he condemned the act of political violence especially the ones which occurred in constituencies 001 and 050, he called on the various political parties to be tolerant. “We will continue to appeal to party leadership especially the Sierra Leones Peoples Party and the All Peoples Congress to maintain sanity within their parties”.
“We are trying to further civic education to see how we can continue to appeal to the public for them to understand how to choose the kind of leadership which will lead us in the country and at community level and to ensure that we have the right people to lead this country to development”, he said.
By Edna Smalle
Wednesday June 29, 2016
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