Sierra Leone elections "free and fair", CWS partner reports

September 4, 2007

Florella Hazeley (right) of the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone with Christiane Agboton-Johnson of Senegal during a United Nations conference on small arms last year. Photo: L. Selde/CWS

The August 11 elections in Sierra Leone were "free and fair" according to the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, a Church World Service partner. "The voting process as well as the counting of votes was generally carried out in a transparent, peaceful and orderly manner."

The Council based its report on the analysis of 600 checklists from elections observers trained by the Council and deployed in polling stations throughout all the electoral districts in the country.

"As of August 21, 93.1 percent of the election results are out," according to the Council’s Florella Hazeley. "It is very likely we are going into a run-off."

By the day after, wrote Hazeley, the All People’s Congress was leading with a total of 754,696 votes and 21 Parliamentary seats in the parliamentary and presidential elections. The Sierra Leone People’s Party had 654,756 votes and 10 seats in Parliament with the People’s Movement for Democratic Change won 239,637 votes and four seats.

Church World Service has worked with Mano River Union countries to ensure a smooth transition to democracy after years of horrific conflict in the region. More than 250,000 people were killed in Liberia's civil war and thousands more were displaced. The civil war in Sierra Leone left at least 75,000 people dead and thousands more maimed.

In 2002, CWS led a delegation of U.S. church leaders to the Mano River Union countries and Gambia. CWS was at the forefront of advocacy for the Liberian people, urging greater attention by the U.S. government, the UN and other international bodies, prior to the outbreak of conflicts culminating in the ouster of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in 2003.

CWS and nine other domestic resettlement agencies helped resettle refugees from the region. The organization also supports agriculture and skills training for women in Sierra Leone.

The CWS Education and Advocacy Program partnered with the Liberian Council of Churches to support voter education, registration and voting and in monitoring the country’s October 2005 elections. Early the following year, CWS and the United States Catholic Mission Association sponsored an international conference in the Liberian capital of Monrovia to raise the visibility of peace efforts by the religious community and consolidate those efforts in fragile, post-conflict Liberia and other Mano River Union countries.

In addition of local observers, the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone trained and deployed 11 from the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), four from Germany’s Evangelical Church Development Service (EED) and four through IBIS West Africa, an education and advocacy organization related to the World University Service.

The Council’s checklist covered a number of issues, including timely availability of voting materials, security of ballot boxes, maintenance of order, interference, secrecy, women’s participation, and transparent and observable counting of votes.

Observers praised electoral officers for work satisfactorily done.

Despite minor problems, the elections were carried out in a "transparent, generally peacefully way," according to the EED observer mission.