Sierra Leone

Voter registration has kicked off in Sierra Leone on 26 February 2007; the exercise is one of the most important phases in preparing for the Presidential and Parliamentary elections slated for 28 July. This is the second election in peacetime following a decade long conflict.

Sierra Leoneans are emerging from the turbulent years and are heading to the registration centres that had been set up in the country’s 14 districts, including the Western area, to register so they could vote. And they will be doing so from 8 am through 5 pm daily for three weeks until Sunday, 18 March.

The voter registration exercise is the first major step in the electoral process and it would test the capacity of the relatively newly established National Electoral Commission (NEC) to organize and hold credible elections. Mr. Niall MaCann, a United Nations Field Coordination

Adviser with UNDP, pointed out that NEC announced last year the start date for the registration and the Commission has delivered on that. “We do expect the voter registration to start and finish on time”, the UN adviser added.

And that conviction could be based on the extensive preparation the NEC, with assistance from major donors and the UN system in Sierra Leone, made in readiness for the on-going registration exercise. Supply, transport and distribution of material to support voter registration and related training were generously sponsored by the donor community's contributions to the UNDP managed electoral basket fund. The European Union added USD 9,75 million;

the UK through their Department for International Development (DFID) USD 9 million; the Irish Aid Agency USD 3 million; and the Danish Government USD 875.000 to the basket. The last consignment of registration materials, procured by UNDP in Sierra Leone, arrived on an Antonvo-124 aircraft from Austand, Belgium, well in advance. Its last trip increases to 150 tons the total weight of registration materials being used at the registration centres.

The Commission has also put measures in place aimed at addressing the logistical challenges it experienced during the last exercise in 2002.

Each of the 2, 740 registration centres has four staff members, including a registrar, who Mr. McCann said would make “the decision on the eligibility of a potential voter”. Based on latest census data, he said it was decided each chiefdom gets at least one registration centre and that “for every 1,500 potential voters in any area one registration centre will be provided thereafter".

The centres are equipped to register up to 2000 potential voters and are stocked with a camera; laminator and stationeries, along with backups. All 10,960 registration agents have been trained according to the manual of registration procedures produced by the NEC and the centres - according to Mr. McCann - have been set up to function as clock-work.

Potential electors arriving at the centres who have been successfully identified would be assisted to fill their registration forms, photographed and handed out a laminated Voter Registration Card with their portrait photo on it. No one would be allowed to vote on Election Day without a Voter Registration Card, Mr. McCann pointed out. Each person must show their ID card or birth certificate, to prove their nationality and age. But Mr. McCann said people who do not have those documents could still register because “respected traditional elders may vouch for somebody’s age and identity”. Universal suffrage in Sierra Leone is the completed eighteenth year of age.

The NEC has taken several measures to ensure the credibility of the registration exercise. The commission has set up a data centre with “advanced technology” at its headquarters that would receive all the registration forms. The data centre is equipped with six imported scanning machines and computers.

Mr. McCann explained that each voter registration form has a unique number that is linked to its voter registration centre, each of which have also been assigned a special five digit code. He said “the provisional register of electors is produced by scanning and encoding the registration forms", and that the computers would reject any form not originating from the registration centre associated with it. The data centre also has 100 personnel trained to crosscheck the accuracy of the computers.

The NEC adviser said that the Commission has also taken steps against multiple registrations. “It is conceivable that some people might want to register more than once. However they are not going to be able to do that because there is an indelible ink that would be applied to each person’s finger who successfully registered.

The ink was imported and was designed to stay on for three weeks. Therefore, any time anyone comes to a registration centre the first thing that registration agents do is to check if they have been registered elsewhere. If there is an ink on the finger they won’t be allowed to register.

Additionally, 268 registration centre monitors would travel around visiting the registration centres, checking on the procedure and making sure the forms are been filled correctly. They would also take completed registration forms from the district headquarters to the NEC headquarters.

The Executive Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General and UN Resident Coordinator in Sierra Leone, Mr. Victor Angelo, had expressed his confidence in NEC recently when he remarked in a room filled with journalists, major foreign donors to the elections and members of the government that “as long as Christiana Thorpe is head of the Commission we

will have a strong Commission”. Perhaps for the first time in the political history of Sierra Leone, the NEC has successfully secured and maintained its independence from Government.

“Absolutely no political bias”

No private, police or other buildings belonging to political parties are being used as registration centres. Mr. McCann said the NEC also decided against using “buildings that would be considered to be politically sensitive due to events that might have happened during the war.” The buildings used are public “for which NEC would pay no money for their use during registration”, he added.

“In my dealings and dealings of my colleagues, absolutely no political bias has ever been raised. We have no suspicions at all of any political involvement or anything to question the NEC officials that we deal with”, Mr. McCann emphasized. The Commission is also benefiting from assistance provided by 50 United Nations professional elections specialists - most of them UN Volunteers. Twenty-two work with the NEC as Technical Assistance Advisers and the rest as District Electoral Advisers across the country. There are two UN advisers working in each of the 14 districts.

NEC’s credibility, along with a successful media campaign including some 448 town criers, for the registration process, seems to be bearing fruits. Many of the registration centres thus far are reporting a steady stream of people wanting to fulfill their civic duties.

The NEC expects more than half of the country's population, 2.75 million people, to vote in this years’ election. Mr. McCann mentioned that this figure is based on the latest census results supplied by Statistics Sierra Leone. The registration exercise is being monitored daily by the NEC. The commission has set up a system that reports the amount of people registered daily and where. That information will be used to target the media campaign at specific communities with lower turnout.

According to Mr. McCann the three weeks registration process would culminate in a provisional electoral register sent to the 112 constituencies for what he called “the exhibition period”. “The provisional electoral register would be placed outside each centre so that people would check if they were registered correctly, or registered at all, or challenge names of people who they do not think should be included in the list". The period from 28 to 29 May is set during which a district electoral staff “would preside and act as a referee”, McCann added.

The successful completion of the registration exercise will add to a long list of achievements made in Sierra Leone that Mr. Angelo has dubbed as signs of “political maturity” in the country. Also on the list and supported by UNDP is the development of a Code of Conduct for Political Parties which has been signed by eight active parties. A similar Media Code of Conduct which would be a guide in reporting and coverage of the elections is currently widely discussed.