-but complains of massive rigging
March 15, 2018 By Ibrahim Tarawallie
Campaign Spokesperson of the National Grand Coalition (NGC) has stated that his party did quite well in the just concluded multitier elections even though he alleged that massive rigging took place during the polls.
The NGC presidential candidate, Dr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, came a distant third polling 174, 014 of the presidential votes cast, representing 6.9%, according to the Chief Electoral Commissioner of National Electoral Commission (NEC), Mohamed Nfa Alie Conteh.
March 27 has been slated as date for the presidential run-off election between the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party and ruling All People’s Congress (APC). Retired Brigadier Julius Maada Bio of the SLPP scored 43.3% of the valid votes cast while Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara of the APC accounted for 42.7%.
In an an interview with Concord Times, Dr. Julius Spencer said: “Our performance is not as good as we had expected but for a party that is just four months old I think we did quite well even with the rigged result.”
He said the party was very much confident that massive rigging took place and that recounts they had asked NEC to do was not done.
He, however, noted that some of the few polling stations that were recounted by NEC showed discrepancies between what was in the ballot boxes and the Results Reconciliation Forms (RRF).
“We believe that there was a systemic problem that was not addressed. We are in consultation with our legal team to determine what should be done. For now, we allow things to stay as they are,” Dr. Spencer stated.
The NGC campaign spokesperson maintained that their position as to whether to join any of the two leading parties in run-off elections on March 27 still remains the same as nothing has been decided yet.