Native Consortium and Research Centre in collaboration with the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL), on 23rd May, 2023 organized an interactive session with Civil Society Organizations and people from the North-East and North-West Region on the Proportional Representation system.

This awareness raising session was held at the MCA Community Center in Makeni.

The session which also served as training for Peace and Love Ambassadors/ Monitors, Civil Society Organizations and Citizens, was geared at helping them understand the PR System better as well as ensuring peaceful, credible and fair elections.

Speaking to the Press on the said event, Edmond Abu Jnr, Executive Director for Native Consortium, stated that the session is part of their effort to complement the ECSL in achieving a free and fair elections. He said they have trained 500 monitors who will spread the awareness nationwide.

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“We had organized similar sessions in, Freetown, Bo, Kenema and now in Makeni, all done alongside the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone,” he said.

Abu also dis that they are going to introduce a software system (portal) that will be reporting on election incidents across the country.

Through this portal, he said they will be giving out credible data on the elections as they will be receiving them from the ECSL.

ECSL Communication Person, Mohamed Jalloh enlightened on the Proportional Representation system, throwing light on the confusing calculations and how they are being placed.

“The PR System came as a result of us not being able to do boundary limitation after the 2021 Census. We took the 2016 and 2021 Censuses, added them together, divided by 2 and that is how we got the number of seats. The Proportional Representation is purely for the councilors and parliamentarians. The President will still go with the second round system, that is to say, if they do not get the 55% on the first round, they will go to the second round, ” he said.

For Mayor and Chairperson, Jalloh informed that they will be looking at first pass i.e if one person passes the other by 1 or ½ %, that person will be declared the winner.

The Block System, he said is mainly for the parliamentarians, adding that the number of seats in the country multiply by the number of districts is what they used to get the quota percentage for parliamentarians which is 11.9.

“For the councilors, we took the number of localities divided by the number of seats in the whole councils in the country and multiply by 100,” said Jalloh.

He thanked Native Consortium for their effort to complement them in educating the people on the PR System, adding that they’ve been able to reach out to many.

“ECSL will not be able to do all the work. I wish Native Consortium will get the financial support to bring political figures onboard to understand the PR System properly because if they do not understand it properly, they will face difficulties and confusion dealing with the figures at the tallying center and at the end of the day ECSL will get lots of questions which they will not be able to answer at that time, ” Jalloh stated.

He added that the ECSL has always been a professional institution and will always continue to be professional despite the hiccups from other places.

He assured the People of Sierra Leone that indeed they have introduced the PR System and that they are still working on it to ensure everyone gets educated.

He ended by calling on the Political head figures to try in any way they can to support the private institutions to complement ECSL in order for them to get knowledge on the PR System so that they would not be confused in the tallying center how these Mathematics are been placed.