A Civil Society Organisation (CSO), Legal Link, has joined the call from thousands of Sierra Leoneans for the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (EC-SL) to kindly extend the date for voter exhibition exercise which ended past Monday 28th November, 2022.

In a letter to the written to the Chief Electoral Commissioner and National Returning Officer of EC-SL, the CSO said: “Mr Chief Electoral Commissioner, you will agree with us that the rationale for embarking on a voter exhibition drive amongst other things is to afford electorates the opportunity to confirm, correct, include or make objections to their records on the provisional voter register so as to prevent disenfranchisement or disruptions on polling day.

By our observation of the exhibition process, it is clear as crystal that your fundamental objective of the exhibition exercise has been clearly undermined due to the shortness of the time frame allocated to complete the exercise. Given the numerous challenges that eclipsed the voter registration exercise, four days is certainly unrealistic to dealing with all of the corrections, inclusions and or objections in the voter register nation-wide.

In line with the spirit of leaving no one behind and also not willfully disenfranchising the electorate of their fundamental human rights to vote and be voted for in the 2023 general elections, we crave your kind indulgence to consider a reasonable extension of the voter exhibition exercise as such will bring no harm to the electioneering process”.