By: Thaimu Bai Sesay
In a joint press release dated 13 June 2023, the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC) together with the Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion (ICPNC) has uncovered their general observations on the campaign activities of political parties in the last 20 days.
These institutions confirmed that they had been monitoring the campaign activities of political parties contesting for the June 24 elections for the past twenty days and observed various issues which they categorically condemned in the press release.
Amongst the major observations detailed in the press release was the pronouncement of results even before the conduct of the elections, the harassment and intimidation of ECSL, the scathing comments, confrontation and disruption of campaign activities of political opponents, the defiant of security directives, the persistent calls for unlawful protest and the inclusion of children in politics.
PPRC and ICPNC expressed that those unfortunate happenings did not only have the proclivity of derailing the gains they had collectively made but also had the tendency of stoking conflict, undermine the democratic process, weaponize segments of the public against state institutions and officials, compromise public safety and mortality and also renege on the peace pledge recently signed by the leadership of contesting political parties.
“Responding to complaints received by the PPRC from the ECSL, APC and SLPP, bordering around the above, a dialogue meeting was convened on Friday the 9th of June 2023, with a view to addressing those complaints and discussing all of the aforementioned emerging issues. Inexplicitly, the APC Party did not attend the meeting and it is yet to proffer an explanation to the commission for their absence”, PPRC revealed in the press release.
PPRC and ICPNC called on all political parties participating in the pending elections to roundly condemn all forms of threats and intimidation of the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone, and other election management bodies. They furthered that all parties should dissociate themselves from and denounce all calls for unlawful protests and disruption of the polls. They concluded that all political parties should be temperate in their utterances and tolerant in their campaigns, and their leaders to act in the spirit of the peace pledge they had recently signed.