SIERRA LEONE PREPARES FOR 2007 ELECTIONS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 FREETOWN 000499 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958 TAGS: PGOV KDEM SL SUBJECT: SIERRA LEONE PREPARES FOR 2007 ELECTIONS Ref: A. 05 Freetown 960, B. 05 Freetown 745 -------------- Summary -------------- 1.(SBU) The National Electoral Commission (NEC) is busily laying the groundwork for credible 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections critical to Sierra Leone's continued peaceful development. President Kabbah intends to announce at the June 23 opening of Parliament that elections will be next May, but the UN is quietly advocating a later election date. The NEC is demarcating politically contentious boundaries for constituencies based on the 2004 census, and then will register voters. Although the return to the constitutionally mandated constituency-based, plurality voting system will make parliamentarians theoretically more accountable to voters, some observers object that this system caused political polarization and other problems in Sierra Leone's past. The NEC plans a voter education drive, but urgently needs funding beyond what the government and UN have provided. Political maneuvering ahead of the official campaign period has been denounced by the NEC. Police are planning training so that appropriate restraint will be exercised during the campaign. End Summary. -------------- NEC Continues Election Prep Per Implementation Calendar -------------- 2.(U) The reformed National Electoral Commission (NEC), under the dynamic leadership of former civil society leader Christiana Thorpe, has made progress with the wide array of preparations necessary before the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections. 3.(U) In addition to training its own staff in how to organize, run, and oversee elections, the NEC is working with the Law Reform Commission and others to rewrite and consolidate disparate electoral laws. They are also completing a nationwide boundary delimitation to redraw constituency boundaries for the first time since 1985. 4.(U) Once the boundary delimitation is complete, NEC officials will begin voter registration. The aim is to create a permanent voter's register, which will make voter rolls less vulnerable to manipulation. -------------- Boundary Delimitation: Adding Opposition Seats in Parliament Raises SLPP Hackles -------------- 5.(U) One of the most contentious activities on the NEC's agenda has been the nationwide boundary delimitation ;exercise. Since constituency lines have not been redrawn since 1986 and ward boundaries since 1956, they vary widely in population. To compound the problem, elections in 1996 and 2002 did not even use existing constituency boundaries, since the proportional representation electoral system was used. Since 2002, each of Sierra Leone's 14 districts has had eight parliamentary seats. 6.(U) The new boundaries use mainly three criteria: the total number of Parliamentary seats (determined by Parliament); the nationwide population according to the most recent census (conducted in December 2004); and boundaries of existing communities (which is negotiable and will rely at least in part on community input). 7.(U) Parliament retained the total number of parliamentary seats, which meant that the existing 112 parliamentary seats were reallocated according to the 2004 census. Not surprisingly, the Western Urban District (including the capital Freetown) was the biggest winner, gaining 9 Parliamentary seats for a total of 17. The biggest loser was Bonthe District, a stronghold of the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP),which lost five seats, leaving it only three seats in Parliament. 8.(U) Of the seven districts that sent only SLPP representatives to Parliament, there was a net loss of FREETOWN 00000499 002 OF 004 four seats. Of the three districts that sent a majority of SLPP representatives to Parliament, there was a net loss of eight seats. Of the three districts that sent a majority of opposition All People's Congress (APC) representatives to Parliament, there was a net gain of three seats. In the Western Urban District, where the APC controls the Freetown city council, there is a 4/2/2 split between the ruling SLPP and two opposition parties (the APC and People's Leadership Party (PLP)). The APC is expected to win most of the nine new seats. 9.(SBU) When the NEC announced the district seat reallocations, the ruling SLPP protested vociferously. A headline appeared on the front page of the SLPP party newspaper "Unity" that read, "Electoral Commission Infringes the Law." The article went on to complain that the NEC had violated the Constitution and bypassed Parliament. There were later complaints about the loss of so many seats in Bonthe District, which the SLPP readily admitted is sparsely populated but retains sentimental significance. (Comment: These initial protests have since subsided, perhaps because the SLPP believes the new seat allocation will not reverse its majority in Parliament. End Comment.) 10.(U) Although seat allocations are now finished, the process of drawing constituency boundaries is still in progress. Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL),which conducted the 2004 census with European Commission support, has only one set of paper maps with census enumeration areas handwritten on them. During the census, SSL staff took Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of each village, so that the villages could be placed on digitized maps. It has taken a while to computerize the maps, in part because GPS data from one area in Sierra Leone placed villages outside the country's borders or in the Atlantic Ocean. UNDP elections consultant Dr. Lisa Handley wrote in a September 2005 boundary delimitation report that such errors are not unusual - the same thing happened in Liberia in 2004 when the military was asked to provide GPS coordinates for Voting Registration Centers. Once the maps are digitized, however, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software makes it relatively easy to delimit constituency boundaries. 11.(U) Once the boundaries are drawn, NEC staff will hold public consultations nationwide to solicit comments. The NEC will consider recommendations for boundary changes that make sense according to the delimitation criteria (geographic features, population density, community distribution, and existing boundaries of chiefdoms and other administrative areas). -------------- Back to the Future: Plurality vs. Proportional Representation Systems -------------- 12.(U) Perhaps the most significant change for the upcoming elections is the return to constitutionally mandated constituency-based, plurality voting system. Elections in 1996 and 2002 used two different variations of the proportional representation (PR) voting system, primarily because there were huge population displacements and large areas of the country that were inaccessible during the 11-year civil war. 13.(U) NEC officials and others hope that the return to the constituency-based, "First Past The Post" (FPTP) system will bring greater accountability of parliamentarians to their constituencies. PR critics say that Sierra Leoneans voted for political party symbols (the SLPP's palm tree or the APC's rising sun) instead of individual candidates, which meant that representatives were more beholden to senior party officials than the people who elected them into office. 14.(SBU) The return to the FPTP system is not universally supported, however. Dr. Abubakarr Kargbo, a prominent political science professor, has argued that the FPTP system has historically been a political disaster for Sierra Leone - not only because constituent accountability never materialized when the system was in place before 1996, but also because it exploited ethnic differences, encouraged electoral violence, and FREETOWN 00000499 003 OF 004 discouraged wide political representation. Kargbo places some of the responsibility for the country's devolution to civil war on the poorly managed FPTP electoral system. -------------- Setting the Date in 2007 -------------- 15.(SBU) President Kabbah told the Ambassador on June 16 that he intends to announce at the June 23 opening of Parliament that the elections will be held in May 2007. He conceded that holding both elections on the same date might be legally impossible despite the considerable saving and political convenience of doing so. Noting his admiration for the few amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Kabbah said that he would not tinker with the Sierra Leone Constitution to accommodate the elections. Kabbah also reiterated his desire to retire, a further indication that the elections will be sooner rather than later. During the meeting, Kabbah asked an aide to convene legal experts, which indicates that even he has not yet settled on a precise date next May. 16.(U) The 1991 National Constitution dictates that Parliament shall be dissolved five years after the date of its first sitting after the general election. New parliamentary elections can occur up to 30 days before and 90 days after the dissolution date. The president also sits for a five-year term, and those elections are supposed to occur within the first three months of his last four months in office or within three months of the post becoming vacant. 17.(U) There is broad consensus among Sierra Leoneans and the international community for simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections because of the cost savings of a single election and because politicians' fear that the electorate will lose interest in the parliamentary election if the presidential election is held first, but as Kabbah stated, this may be constitutionally impossible. (Note: By our count, parliamentary elections should occur between May 26 and September 23, 2007. The ostensible window for presidential elections would be between February 19 and April 19, 2007 unless President Kabbah takes some other kind of action, like retiring early. End Note.) -------------- Education, Oversight Needed To Make Democracy Work -------------- 18.(U) Voter education is a key component of the NEC's strategy for making the upcoming elections free and fair. A nationwide campaign using print, radio and television is planned, but Sierra Leone's mostly illiterate population who are accustomed to being influenced with rice by political hopefuls and pressured by their local chiefs to vote for certain candidates, have a steep learning curve. The NEC just completed a nationwide campaign to educate Sierra Leoneans on the constituency allocation and boundary delimitation process. The campaign was meant help Sierra Leoneans understand how the election process works so they can own the process as it moves forward. The next step, once the digitized maps are completed and draft constituency boundaries drawn, will be to circulate them for comment and revision. NEC staffers have said that the first round of education has been very successful, and even schoolchildren have had a chance to play with the maps and numbers and see how the process works. 19.(U) Although the NEC has made significant progress, officials concede that funding has become an impediment that could derail their calendar for election preparations. Although the Sierra Leone Government and UNDP had supported the NEC, pledges from the European Commission and the British have not materialized, and other major donors, including the U.S., have not been forthcoming to date. In addition the Political Parties Registration Commission (PPRC),which as established inter alia to resolve campaign complaints, is severely underfunded. 20.(U) Political maneuvering is already in full swing, FREETOWN 00000499 004 OF 004 and there have been multiple reports that the SLPP is using its incumbency inappropriately. Vice President Berewa, the SLPP's 2007 presidential nominee, has reportedly been using his frequent upcountry visits to launch public projects as political rallies. Post has seen an attempt to politicize an Ambassador's Special Self Help Fund project with prominent local SLPP and APC activists vying for control and credit. There have also been reports that local authorities in SLPP-dominant districts have prevented the opposition APC from holding political meetings. NEC Commissioner Thorpe recently condemned early campaigning ahead of the official campaign period and said that incidents of wrongdoing are being monitored and will later be raised to the PPRC, which is responsible for enforcing electoral laws. Thorpe is also one of the PPRC Commissioners. -------------- Security: A Serious Concern -------------- 21.(U) Like peas and carrots, elections and violence have frequently been seen together throughout Sierra Leone's history. Police are already cracking down in an attempt to maintain order: in November 2005, they arrested People's Movement For Democratic Change (PMDC) leader Charles Margai in Bo for an alleged violation of the Public Order Act (see ref A). In June, police in Bo chased down a foreigner who photographed an SLPP parade where Vice President Berewa was present and arrested two Sierra Leoneans who gave him shelter in their internet cafe. The press reported that the police will deploy 200 armed police to Biriwa Chiefdom, Bombali District on June 16 to allow a chiefdom candidate declaration ceremony to go forward. Previous attempts to have the ceremony, press reports say, have been cancelled because of violence. In May, a policeman in Kailahun told an Embassy staffer that he plans to be on leave during the 2007 elections because he has fears about what will happen. (Note: Many young men in Kailahun vocally support Charles Margai. End Note.) 22.(SBU) Plans are being made to prevent political and police violence. The American head of the UN police liaison unit recently briefed the Ambassador on pre- election training that will be given to the police in crowd control. The objective, he said, will be to make the police capable of handling different levels of demonstrations instead of their two current modes: passivity and over-reaction. -------------- Comment -------------- 23.(U) Peaceful, free, and fair elections in 2007 will be crucial to Sierra Leone's continuing political maturation, and the NEC's efforts to reform the electoral process and educate the public represent Sierra Leone's best hope for achieving them. The NEC has a long, hard slog ahead, though, and it may not be possible to complete everything they are planning to do before the election (e.g., the permanent voter's register and delimiting ward boundaries for local elections in 2008). It will be crucial in the months ahead to keep the spotlight on politicians of all stripes to ensure that partisan activities do not break Sierra Leone's fragile peace. HULL