National Electoral Commission says it will charge all presidential candidates in the forthcoming election Le 100 million as nomination fee, up from Le 1 million in 2007, while parliamentary candidates will be required to pay Le 25 million up from Le 250,000.
In a press release issued in Freetown on Monday, NEC Chairperson Christiana Thorpe says all fees levied on mayoral, local council and paramount chieftaincy candidates will amount to just over 23 per cent of the projected Le 88 billion that the 2012 elections will cost the tax payer. “This does not include donor contribution of $ 9.6 million” she says.
The NEC boss said the fees were “justified as we move gradually towards national ownership of our elections,” adding that “consultations were held at sub-regional level taking into consideration the average nomination fees for elective offices.”
Reacting to the NEC announcement, Secretary General of the main opposition SLPP, Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie described the fees as “preposterous”, adding that he believed “politics is not for the rich but for all citizens who meet the constitutional criteria.”
He said: “The right to vote and be voted for was an inherent human right of any citizen, therefore a high financial qualification placed by NEC was a barrier to enjoying that right”.
Tejan Sie called on NEC to “re-visit its decision and come to terms with reality.”
In his initial response, the Acting National Secretary of the People’s Movement for Democratic Change, PMDC Erik Aiah Jabba described NEC nomination fees as “unacceptable.” He said “this was a recipe for corruption as elected MP would seek to recoup their nomination fees on being elected through corrupt means.”
Jabba told Politico that “the Advisory Council of the PMDC will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss the issue and that will be ready to work with other parties to confront NEC on the issue because they were not consulted by NEC before the decision was taken.”
Leader of the United Democratic Movement, Mohamed Bangura, told Politico that “he has no problem with the amount levied for presidential candidates,” adding that “it was in fact too small.”
He, however, said that his party was “opposed to the fee levied for parliamentary and local council candidates.”He said: “The UDM will collaborate with other political parties to make Christiana Thorpe realise that her decision is rubbish.”
Secretary General of the ruling All People’s Congress, Victor Foh, said “the constitution and the electoral laws act empower NEC to take decisions related to the conduct of elections and that what NEC has done is nothing out of the way.”
According to Foh, “the conduct of the election was expensive and that it was being paid for by Sierra Leoneans and her development partners and NEC must find a way to raise funds” but that the issue would be discussed by his party’s National Advisory Committee to determine their position.
In other matters the press release states that nearly two and a half million people have so far collected their voter identity cards and that the rest of the cards still not collected, represent “corrections done during registration” and those belonging to Sierra Leoneans in the “Diaspora.”
The NEC press release said that out of more than 7,500 suspected cases of fraudulent registration, seventy people have been charged to court while the rest “are currently at several stages of investigation by the Criminal Investigations Department of the Sierra Leone Police.”
