ECSL’s Woes Continue in Court

Following the refusal of the Chief Electoral Commissioner for Sierra Leone to grant access to popular pro-democracy lawyer  and human rights activist, Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah, has brought an action against the Chief Electoral Commissioner and the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone, on the basis that the refusal or denial of the ECSL to grant him access to the unaggregated or disaggregated results, otherwise known as the Results Reconciliation Forms) of the 11,712 ECSL’s designated polling station results for the Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Council Elections held on 24th June 2023, was and is a violation of his right to freedom of expression and access to information, guaranteed in section 25 of the Constitution of Sierra Leone.

It would be recalled that the Chief Electoral Commission announced the final aggregated results for the Presidential and Parliamentary/Local Council Elections on 27^th June 2023 and on 1st July 2023, respectively.

Lawyer Marrah’s request for the unaggregated or disaggregated data results or RRFs was made under the Right to Access Information Act of 2013. Despite being instructed by the Right to Access Information Commission by letter dated 24^th August 2023, ECSL failed to release the said polling station results to the applicant or publish the same on its website. Lawyer Marrah, a leading human rights lawyer has argued in his papers that ECSL does not have any legal basis or justification under the Public Elections Act 2022 or the Constitution of Sierra Leone to restrict citizens’ access to the polling station results, which formed the basis for the results which ECSL announced for the Presidential, Parliamentary, and Local Council Elections. His request joins a number of calls from national and international bodies, such as the Carter Centre, the EU Observer Mission for Sierra Leone, the US Embassy, and the National Elections Watch, to release disaggregated data so that citizens can verify the results announced by ECSL in the last General Elections.

Lawyer Marrah has asked the Supreme Court to order ECSL to release to him or grant him access to the original copies of all 11,712 polling station results within seven days of the order.

We hope that ECSL would finally be compelled by the Supreme Court to release the said data in order to promote transparency in our electoral processes and build confidence in the electoral management bodies. The issue of the polling station results’ data has generated so much controversy recently in the governance in Sierra Leone, and it is only but appropriate for the highest court of the land to address this issue once and for all.