By: Haja Hawa Koroma
The office of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) has issued out a press statement on Thursday 30th June 2022 drawing the attention of the public and the international community to some of their observations about the National Elections Watch (NEW) being a partisan civil society organization.
According to the press statement, they have been observing NEW ever since the party won the 2018 elections and took up office.
They claim that NEW has been discrediting everything the SLPP party does ever since then.
They also believe that NEW had condemned their government and believes that the people of Sierra Leone made a mistake in electing the President Julius Maada Bio in 2018.
They added that, NEW had hosted a Consortium of Civil Society Groups in a conference intended to discuss the various allegations of financial fraud and the no-inclusivity within its own network, just before the bye-elections were held on the 25th June 2022.
Towards the end of the conference, NEW attacked the SLPP.
They also released a report with an EU logo claiming that the civic space in Sierra Leone has been constricted since 2018.
The SLPP is exasperated by this unwarranted attack from NEW as the party prides itself as firm believers in democratic values. They highlighted the fact that they have never prevented any Sierra Leonean, be it Journalists or CSOs from forming associations or raising issues with government.
They are therefore surprised by the omission of some facts which NEW clearly understands. Between 2007 and 2018 the SLPP headquarters was burnt down twice, women were raped and beaten at the party office, district offices were attacked in many parts of the country, party meetings were disrupted in many parts of the country, some SLPP MPs were imprisoned, suspected SLPP supporters were summarily dismissed from jobs, a sitting Vice President was removed from office. So with all this, the SLPP does not think NEW is politically neutral to say that the civic space shrunk in the country when President Bio took up office.
In addition, on the day of the bye-elections that was held on Saturday 25th June 2022, NEW deployed observers who sent in their findings on the conduct of the elections. It was stated in the press statement that the SLPP raised concerns and petition filed by them relating to ballot stuffing and vote-buying which were confirmed by observers in Constituency 056, but NEW totally ignored these concerns.
The SLPP is raising these concerns because as trivial as these issues might appear, peddling on such misinformation by CSOs or election observers has the potential of undermining the integrity of electoral institution and by extension stability of the country. So the SLPP asks that the CSOs play their role in upholding the standards of fairness to all players, and encourages them to bring their own fair share of contribution to democracy building by being neutral and to refrain from acting in undermining state efforts.
