Christiana Thorpe Warns Maada Ngombu

The chairperson of the National Electoral Commission in Sierra Leone, Dr. Christiana Thorpe(photo) on Thursday asked Maada Ngombu, a Sierra Leonean employee in a World Bank project "to stop abusing and intimidating staff members of the Commission and desist from instructing me on my duties". Ngombu is apparently a desperate supporter of one of the political parties in the recent run-off election.

Meanwhile the opposition APC is maintaining its lead by leaps and bounds. The next announcement from NEC will be made Monday September 17. Here is Christiana Thorpe’s statement:

National Electoral Commission (NEC)
15 Industrial Estates, Wellington, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Statement from NEC Chairperson,Dr.Christiana Thorpe.

NEC Statement to the Media - 13 September 2007

The NEC is ready, once again, to present additional progressive results of the presidential run-off elections. NEC has endeavored to include as much information in the results database as possible, making sure that progress is made on the results from all districts in the country.

The verification process continues, in order to ensure that the official results are indeed those recorded in the polling stations and accurately reflect the will of the voters. One of the checks and balances instituted by the Commission is the unusual high levels of participation in some polling stations. The NEC has even noted results with turn-outs of 100% and over. In a meeting on 11 September, the Commissioners unanimously took the following decisions on the handling of cases with unusual high turnout (copy of the decision attached):

a) in cases where voter turn-out is between 95% and 100% in a polling station, the NEC will conduct an investigation if the station has been the object of a complaint or is named in the incident report from the district office;

b) in cases of voter turn-out at 100%, an investigation will be conducted in all cases; and

c) in cases of voter turn-out exceeding 100%, the station results will be automatically invalidated.

Implementing these decisions requires a substantial amount of work in the district offices. The NEC intends to start this work tomorrow in order to enter the final stages of the tabulation process. Where recounts are required, they will be done in the presence of political party agents, observers and the
Sierra Leone Police, at the NEC district offices.

The Commission would like to report an increase in the number of threatening and intimidating calls and messages to NEC officials over the past few days. I would like to especially request Mr. Maada Ngombu of World Bank project NDB Building to stop abusing and intimidating staff members of the Commission and desist from instructing me on my duties. I would like to remind him that his duties as the Transitional Support Secretariat ended with the recruitment of the Commission’s core staff. Misusing the telephone numbers of the members of the electoral staff that he acquired during that period to threaten and intimidate them at this time is, to say the least, unprofessional.

Some members of the print and electronic media seem to be engaged in a scheme to deliberately misinform the public in spite of the Commission’s attempt to keep the nation informed through regular updates. Please be reminded that the responsibility for the final certified declaration of results rests with the NEC.

Notes on results
� Today we are presenting results from all 14 districts.

� 4,644 polling station results have now been entered into the results database. This represents 75.4% of all polling stations across the country. There are now 1,513 polling stations pending.

� The average national turnout is currently 72.4%.

� There are 36,165 invalid votes, representing 2.5% of total votes cast.

� The detailed results, by station and by center, will be posted on the NEC web site immediately after this press conference: www.necsierraleone.org.

� Because of the field work to be done in regards to the required investigations, there will be no press briefings until next week.

� Our next press conference will be on Monday, 17 September, here at the NEC Media Centre. The new progressive cumulative results with all the new official results added to today’s total will be presented then. We will announce the time of the press-briefing subsequently.

Editor’s note:

Here is a summary of Thursday’s results presented by NEC:

Presidential Election Results by District
Kailahun
Ernest Koroma(APC)—11,146
Solomon Berewa(SLPP)—48,649

Kenema
Koroma—26,631
Berewa—83,187

Kono
Koroma—50,927
Berewa—61,983

Bombali
Koroma—101,102
Berewa—11,646

Kambia
Koroma—44,743
Berewa—13,391

Koinadugu
Koroma—38,119
Berewa—20,379

Port Loko
Koroma—110,106
Berewa—17,002

Tonkolili
Koroma—95,444
Berewa—12,705

Bo
Koroma—40,864
Berewa—85,512

Bonthe
Koroma—19,154
Berewa—25,466