This call was made by the party’s National Secretary General, Ambassador Alhaji Osman Foday Yansaneh at a recent press conference held at the party’s headquarters at Old Railway Line, Freetown.
According to Ambassador Yansaneh the March 7th elections conducted by NEC in which 16 political parties took part was almost fully financed by the Government of Sierra Leone.
“The APC fully subscribed and complied with all stipulations of the law relating to the conduct of the aforesaid elections,” Ambassador Yansaneh said, adding that they rely on the ability and integrity of NEC in conducting free, fair and credible elections in line with the law.
He claimed that evidences abound to prove that NEC made several clerical errors which were not logical in the Reconciliation Result Forms (RRFs). He added that there were instances of widespread over voting in some areas; issuance of unsigned ballot papers and duplication and replacement of the RRFs.
“We demand that NEC use manual counting to count ballot papers in the runoff election,” Ambassador Yansaneh demanded.
Ambassador Yansaneh also noted that a review of NEC staff in critical areas of the process that include ward coordinators and other staff contracted by NEC must be reviewed in order to make the runoff election more credible than the March 7, 2018 election.
“It is abundantly clear that the Commission woefully failed to execute its constitutional remit in a manner befitting a democratic Sierra Leone,” Yansaneh said, adding: “over 100 lawyers want to be our polling agents for the runoff.”
According to Abdulai Bayraytay, apart from the APC, various other political parties have raised serious concern calling for a recount and integrity of the March 7th election.
He added that as a party in governance “we are very mindful and if people can take into consideration that most of the conflicts that occur in sub-Saharan Africa are usually as a result of electioneering challenges, then you would know the seriousness of our own situation.”
“We have responsibility as a party and as a government to ensure at the end of the voting process when results are announced that nobody would have cause to challenge the result,” Bayraytay maintained.
