News:
July 25, 2023
A member of the Liberian delegation to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament, Stephen J. H. Zargo has said considering the proximity between Liberia and Sierra Leone, there are a lot of lessons to be learnt from the Sierra Leone’s general elections.
According to him there are similarity in tribal and culture, almost twenty five percent of the tribe in Liberian can be found in Sierra Leone; they have a long porous border and interact with each other on daily basis.
And from what transpired in Sierra Leone, there is the need to look at issue of transparency and enabling environment, that will ensure that the electoral body is neutral and doing the work that it was established to do, and the need to be independent so there are a lot of lessons to learn.
Again, election issues are of concern to ECOWAS, so “in my honest opinion things that were witnessed in the Sierra Leone’s elections, we need to tackle it by improving on them more especially when you have the opposition denouncing the election results; they felt the process was not as transparent”, he indicated.
In a telephone interview from his base in Liberia, he pointed out that, the hasty manner the Sierra Leonean President was sworn in more especially when the results were being challenged, instead of addressing the lingering issues before the swearing in raised a lot of concern.
“We in Liberia are taking note hoping that the process can be transparent so that at the end of the day like what took place in Namibia, I listened to news from there where the opposition there indicated that the election was transparent, the outcome of October 10, 2023 we hope we will have an improved election”, Zargo said.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com