Just before proclaiming the winner of the 2012 presidential elections the Chief Electoral Commissioner of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) Christiana Thorpe told Sierra Leonean voters “Your Voice has been heard.”
At about 6.30 pm Friday 23rd November 2012 Thorpe pronounced Ernest baiKoroma “duly elected as president” for a second term of five years.
Before announcing the results, she read out a 4 page statement outlining the work of NEC in phases up to the announcement of the final results for the Presidential elections.
She said the planning took them about 2 years and it was informed “by lessons learned from previous elections, recommendations made by national and international observers after the 2007 national elections, and consultations throughout the process with electoral stakeholders including political parties and civil society.”
Thorpe spoke about the bio-metric voter registration which she said “ensured that Sierra Leone has a clean voter register where each registered Sierra Leonean has one vote.”
On Election Day, the NEC Chief said “National and International observers and political party agents observed every action of the election day throughout the country.”
She explained that the ‘Results Tallying’ had safeguards “to catch any discrepancy in the counting of votes.” From the process of “double blind entry of the result forms,” to the design of the results form which did not allow for a number higher than 999 and the tallying software which had an average of 300 voters per polling station.
Explaining about the 10% quarantined cases she said they were of three categories; the first she said was actual quarantined cases; the second all results forms that had been received at the regional tally centre but not yet processed and lastly the results from distant locations that had not yet reached the tally centres.
On over voting and recount the NEC Chief said five polling stations were recounted in the North, with Bombali(3), Tonkolili (1) and Port Loko (1), noting that there was “no over voting” in any of the polling stations recounted.
In the Western Area, “5 polling stations were annulled due to over voting” out of 17 polling stations which were recounted, with 12 showing “no discrepancies.”
In the East 149 polling stations were flagged for recounting (Kailahun-6, Kenema 2 and Kono- 141) and there was no over voting in any of the stations.
In the South there were 2 polling stations to be recounted (Moyamba-1, Pujehun-1) and no over voting was detected.
Thorpe assured that “the number of registered voters in the polling stations where ballot boxes are to be recounted has no effect on NEC’s announcement of the Presidential result.”
She explained that “it is mathematically impossible for the number of ballots in the ballot boxes to be recounted to impact the outcome of the Presidential election” adding that “even if one political party any political party- receives 100% of all the votes in all of the ballot boxes to be entered at the regional tally centres, it will not change the result.”
She further assured that “NEC has followed international standards and ensured a due process where every vote counts and every vote has been counted.”
Thorpe noted “your voice has been heard.”
The NEC Chief then gave a run down of the elections statistics saying “9,269 polling station results were entered into the result database, representing 97.6% of all polling stations across the country, excluding those that were invalidated.”
“The average national turnout is 87.3%”, and “The total number of valid votes cast is 2,350,626.”
The total invalid votes was 108,898 representing 4.7% of total votes cast.
She read out the results with
Koroma APC scoring 58.7%,
Bio SLPP 37.4%,
Margai PMDC 1.3%,
Carew CDP 1%,
Collins RUFP 0.6%,
Kamara PDP 0.4%,
Conteh PLP 0.3%,
Bangura UDM 0.2%
Fullah UNPP 0.2%
Thorpe then went on to “certify that 1,314,881 valid votes were cast in favour of the candidate ERNEST BAI KOROMA” who “therefore received 58.7% of valid votes cast in the election.” As a result she proclaimed “ERNEST BAI KOROMA has been duly elected president of the Republic of Sierra Leone at the Presidential election of 2012.”
She also pointed out that “Any citizen of Sierra Leone may challenge the validity of the election of the president by petition to the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone, within seven days after the declaration of the presidential results.”
This effectively should be before Friday 30th November 2012.