September 25, 2017 By Mohamed Massaquoi
Vilified: head of NEC Nfah Alie Conteh
The Institute for Governance Reforms, (IGR) has accused the administration of Ernest Bai Koroma of undermining the activities of National Electoral Commission (NEC) in a bid to micromanage its operational independence.
IGR’s Critical Perspectives of Governance Volume VIII, which detailed the management of elections in 2018, states that one of the challenges facing NEC at the moment is the lack of operational independence, which could lead to concerns about NECs credibility in the 2018 polls.
This brief highlighted three ways NEC’s operational independence is being compromised: the uncertainty of state financing of elections and its impact on timeliness and quality; overcrowding of the electoral calendar with activities such as redistricting and creation of new chiefdoms that are not crucial to the success of the 2018 polls, thus overstretching staff time; and more importantly, the on-going uncertainty of job security of the head of NEC.
The report further notes that the 2017 voter registration is the very first time Sierra Leone experimented a merger of voter and civil registration, thus data was not in the exclusive domain of NEC, and consequently, the institution does not have absolute control over data as in previous elections.
“The Venezuelan service provider hired for voter registration in 2017 was contractually accountable to NCRA [National Civil Registration Agency] who largely determined the type of information collected, such as ten thumbprints and the origins of parents of registrants. As such the data collected was way beyond the information needed for elections. Another major issue was the logistical challenges that managing such a huge data posed. The transmission of data from field kits to the central server using low/no speed internet was challenging. NCRA used internet service to transmit data from over 3,300 kits deployed nationwide. Some machines could not transmit in areas with low connectivity. Kits were also moved from area-to-area, leading to some slippages in transmission,’’ the report notes.
This is not the first time IGR has raised critical issues regarding the crucial 2018 elections. It could be recalled that during the National Population and Housing Census 2016, similar concerns were raised regarding the credibility and independence of some staff of Statistic Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile, IGR recommends that government should as a matter of urgency prioritise spending of all election activities, organise a multi stakeholder dialogue and confidence building on elections, while NEC on its part should enhance their public relations and information sharing on challenges.