AYV News, June 13, 2025
“You are a crucial player; the Tripartite Secretariat cannot operate without your constituency, without your energy, and without your foresight. You understand women’s issues better, you parent the girls, you raise the kids, and what we do at the tripartite is about instituting applicable electoral measures within governance institutions that will consequently speak to the political welfare of women and the social livelihood of girls,” Tripartite Coordinator told the leadership of the Women’s Forum Sierra Leone. He addressed them on Wednesday at their office on Dundas Street, Freetown.
Ngolo Katta said recommendation 78 of the tripartite recommendations related to electoral systems for Sierra Leone, which implementation required laborious consultations with various sectors of society. Women’s Forum had a huge role to play, and he invited them to commence playing that task. The processes for consultations and the national dialogue on electoral systems had begun, and the Women’s Forum should own up.
He updated the meeting on a range of activities the Tripartite Secretariat had executed, including holding three strategic meetings with the technical committee of the development partners on elections management, and on implemented recommendations such as recommendation 5 dealing with management review on the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone.
In another engagement, Mr. Katta addressed a conference on national civil society dialogue and position paper on the preferred electoral system for Sierra Leone organized by National Elections Watch (NEW). He told CSO actors that their perception of the subject matter was critical to helping Sierra Leoneans make a decision that would determine the type of voting system in the 2028 elections.
The consultations would be set in a way that would accommodate sectors of the public, including petty traders, professional groups, parliamentarians, civil and public servants, lecturers and teachers, persons with disability, youth groups, the private sector, etc., to discuss voting choices between First-Past-the-Post and the Proportional Representation. NEW was to gauge the opinions of civil society players regarding the type of electoral system and present a position paper to the Tripartite Secretariat for the attention of the Chief Minister heading the Tripartite Steering Committee.
