By Jamie Hitchen
Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio speaks to reporters after casting his ballot in Sierra Leone general elections in Freetown, on June 24, 2023.
When Sierra Leone’s new parliament met for its swearing-in ceremony on July 13, the fact that only one MP from the opposition All People’s Congress, or APC, was in attendance did not reflect the party’s performance in the country’s June 2023 general elections. Instead, it reflected their lack of faith in the credibility of the election’s declared outcome. Despite officially winning 54 of the 135 seats for which direct elections were held in the polls, the APC decided to boycott participating in the national legislature and local councils indefinitely as a protest. Since then, a second APC legislator has defied the party directive and taken the parliamentary oath, but for the most part the boycott has held.
In addition to the opposition, prominent international observation missions and domestic observer groups raised concerns about the results announced by the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone, or ECSL, for the presidential, parliamentary and local council races conducted in June. Both the European Union and Carter Carter issued several statements requesting that the ECSL go beyond the district breakdowns that it released and publicly share presidential results by polling unit in order to improve transparency, to no avail. And with the date for a legal challenge of the outcome now having passed, the official results will not be altered.
According to the ECSL, incumbent President Julius Maada Bio was re-elected to a second—and constitutionally final—term in the June 24 presidential ballot, with 56.2 percent of the vote. That put him just 1.2 percent above the 55 percent threshold required to win in the first round. His main challenger, the APC’s Samura Kamara, trailed behind with 41.2 percent. But questions about the official results have cantered around four main issues.
First, the figures do not fall within the margin of error of results predicted by the parallel vote tabulation, or PVT, conducted by the domestic election observer network, National Elections Watch. Accurate to within 1 percentage point in 2018 for both the first- and second-round results, the 2023 PVT estimated that Bio would win 53.1 percent of the vote at best. While still representing a significant first-round lead, that outcome would have been insufficient to meet the constitutional requirement to avoid a runoff.
Second, the PVT figures also estimated turnout to be 77.3 percent, while the ECSL put that figure at 83 percent. Turnout has historically been high in Sierra Leone’s postwar elections, but the regional differentials in turnout observed in this election suggest that Bio’s ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party, or SLPP, used its incumbency advantages to diminish turnout in opposition strongholds and boost turnout among its own supporters—turnout averaged 75.6 percent in seven northern and western districts traditionally won by the APC and 93.4 percent in the six southern and eastern districts the SLPP historically dominates. In fairness, the fact that the APC’s campaign lacked coherence was also a factor in its poor performance in traditional strongholds.
A third issue was a dramatic decline in the number of invalid votes recorded across all electoral races, from 5.2 percent in 2018 to just 0.4 percent this year. The ECSL has yet to provide an explanation for this tenfold drop. While civic education campaigns were conducted ahead of the polls, this has been the case ahead of previous elections, without such a precipitous decline or even change in the proportion of invalid votes. As a result, unsubstantiated and unproven rumors circulated across Sierra Leonean WhatsApp groups that votes had been invalidated to benefit the SLPP, exacerbating doubts about the integrity of the official results.
How long the APC boycott can, or will, be sustained is difficult to say, but it appears highly unlikely it will be maintained over the long term or achieve any of the major demands the party set forth.
A final issue concerned the discrepancy between parliamentary and presidential voting. According to the ECSL data from Freetown’s two voting districts, Western Area Rural and Western Area Urban, 126,000 more voters cast ballots in the parliamentary election than in the presidential poll, even though voting took place simultaneously and the emphasis in campaigns was on the presidential race. Meanwhile, the turnout in the two electoral districts averaged out to 95 percent according to the ECSL’s data, even though they were the areas most affected by delays on voting day. Forty-one percent of polling units were still closed an hour after their scheduled opening time, due to the late deployment of voting materials, according to domestic observer data. Polling units did stay open late to enable those in line at the time of closing to vote, but long lines likely discouraged some citizens from voting.
Bio was keen to avoid a run-off, even making it a core message of the SLPP campaign. Given the slender margin by which he did so, these discrepancies in the data raise serious questions about the credibility of the official results. The opposition’s concerns were shared by Sierra Leone’s prominent international development partners, with the United States, Germany, the European Union, Ireland and the United Kingdom issuing a joint public statement on June 28 in which they raised concerns about the lack of transparency in the tabulation process.
Since the election, they have continued to express concerns about the credibility of the results, both privately and publicly, with the U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone David Reimer reiterating in an August radio interview that he would like to see an independent review of the elections.
Although Bio’s government sought to build new partnerships with countries like Turkey during his first term, the EU, the U.K. and the U.S., along with multilateral organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, remain critical funders of government programs and current and prospective infrastructure projects. Those partnerships could be jeopardized as a result of the June 2023 election. In recognition of this, Bio has factored in the need to appeal to an international audience as part of the calculations behind his new Cabinet, which was announced in two tranches in mid-July. It saw the removal of several SLPP stalwarts and the rise to prominence of young technocrats in key ministerial portfolios such as agriculture, foreign affairs, information and chief minister.
For the latter position—a powerful role Bio reconstituted upon taking office in 2018 that oversees and coordinates work across ministries—Bio selected David Sengeh, the 36-year-old former education minister. Sengeh has already held meetings with prominent development partners, as the government seeks to shift the focus away from the elections and back toward pressing economic and development challenges, such as the rising cost of living and its “Big Five” agenda, which includes a strong focus on boosting domestic agricultural production and ambitious targets for creating jobs for youths.
Gender commitments have also featured prominently in the government’s post-election communications strategy. The 2022 Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act included requirements that one-in-three names on party lists to be women and suggested that at least a third of the president’s Cabinet be women. Both benchmarks have largely been adhered to, in what is a welcome step toward greater gender equality in Sierra Leonean politics. Bio appointed nine women as Cabinet ministers out of a total of 29, with a further 11 as deputy ministers, even if the most prestigious ministries are still mostly held by men. In parliament, too, 30 percent of the 135 directly elected MPs are women, across both the SLPP and APC, which were the only two parties to win seats.
However, since the official opening of parliament on Aug. 3, only one party has chosen to take up their seats. How long the APC boycott can, or will, be sustained is difficult to say, but it appears highly unlikely it will be maintained over the long term or achieve any of the major demands the party set forth, such as the resignation of key officials, including those in charge of the ECSL and the judiciary, and a rerun of the elections. In the meantime, the SLPP will be able to push ahead with its agenda free from opposition scrutiny, making the country look more akin to a one-party state than a competitive and vibrant democracy.
Jamie Hitchen is an independent political analyst and honorary research fellow at the University of Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter at @jchitchen.