Civil society organisations have a very important contribution to make in the process of transforming fragile states into peaceful and stable nations. Frances Fortune and Ambrose James describe the experiences of Sierra Leone during past elections.
On 11 August 2007, Sierra Leoneans cast their votes for the country’s next parliament and president with a record turnout of 76%. The turnout was similar for the 8 September presidential run-off. These national elections marked a critical benchmark in Sierra Leone’s transition from its brutal, decade-long conflict towards the consolidation of peace and stability. A few limited incidents of violence were reported, particularly in the capital, and campaigning and intimidation were noted around some polling stations. Overall, however, the elections were hailed as free and fair by both domestic and international observers.
Civil society organisations played an important role in achieving this peaceful outcome. Elections can easily turn violent as a result of rumour-mongering and inflammatory propaganda. To help prevent violence, the NGO Search for Common Ground Sierra Leone (SFCG), supported two civil society initiatives that focused on creating transparency in the elections: the Independent Radio Network (IRN) and National Election Watch (NEW).
Community radio
The first CSO supported by SFCG was a community radio network. Established in 2002 specifically to support that year’s national elections, the Independent Radio Network (IRN) has grown into a national network of 21 community and private radio stations. Each member station in the country’s 14 districts feeds local news to a central hub and production studio in Freetown, where news programming is packaged for simultaneous broadcast across the network. In addition, member stations carry SFCG programming to inform and entertain their listeners on key social and political issues.
The IRN was developed by SFCG in partnership with the Media Foundation for Peace and Development and with technical support from the BBC World Service Trust. The long-term aim of the network is to create West Africa’s first self-supporting national public information network.
For the 2007 poll, SFCG and IRN placed 420 roving election reporters into areas where high tension existed between rival parties and in remote regions that otherwise had no broadcast coverage. The reporters, members of SFCG’s staff and IRN member stations, were requested to report on the conditions they observed.
Throughout election day, stories poured in to IRN headquarters in Freetown. This live news service gave a clear view of how the elections were progressing throughout the country at district level. Since reporters informed both the national IRN network and their local radio station, ordinary people were in effect reporting to each other; they provided authentic, eye-witness reports on the district activities. Their individual stories bolstered confidence in the process and helped to ensure a peaceful outcome.
Rumour management
Behind the scenes, IRN producers in Freetown were making key decisions on the stories that should go on the air. They attempted to strike a balance between reporting news that people deserved to hear about their own country, and making sure that passions were not inflamed by news reports that did not reflect the general trend around the country.
In one example, by late morning an inflammatory story broke that had potentially serious implications for the peaceful outcome of the election in Freetown, the opposition stronghold. From a police station in the capital, reports began to surface that a ballot box had been found stuffed with papers and election materials. IRN rapidly dispatched a reporter to the scene who found youths already surrounding the station. Allegations that the government-controlled police were intervening to alter the result in Freetown created mounting tension. IRN sent a second reporter to record the contents of the box on video, which turned out to be old training materials and not electoral ballots. IRN’s executive producer made the decision to put the reporters live on the air to explain the situation and describe the contents of the box to the nation. With voters around the capital glued to their radio sets, IRN proved its capacity to calm fears and set the tone through credible media reporting. This approach proved to be important in allowing for a peaceful and fair election.
As voting drew to a close at the end of election day, SFCG and IRN led the independent media’s shadow count of electoral votes. The 420 election reporters across the country called in the unofficial voting results as they were announced at each poll centre. Volunteers manned the phones at the Freetown hub and staff members input the results in a database. Working at a pace of around 1% of total votes per hour, the tallies were broadcast to listeners around the nation.
Two days later, as the National Electoral Commission (NEC) began issuing consolidated results, SFCG and IRN adjusted their strategy and focused on providing reports that analysed and explained the results as they emerged. The goal was to help manage the populations’ expectations and enhance their understanding of the results. Overall, the analyses provided by IRN did contribute to the people’s comprehension of the results as well as to the patience the public exhibited while waiting for the final result.
The approach of gradually releasing information in the period between the closing of the polls and the NEC’s initial announcements of the results (which was three days later for the presidential run-off) was a key element in reducing tension around the country. At the same time, it gave the public confidence that there was an independent watchdog monitoring the process in case the official results differed significantly from the individual counts. The IRN broadcasts during the elections were a real test of the ability of the local media to contribute to the political process with mature and constructive reporting, without resorting to inflammatory propaganda.
Throughout the election period, IRN reacted rapidly to the constantly changing news environment without compromising its core principles of supporting a peaceful and credible elections process. In so doing, it won respect from independent media monitors as well as providing a crucial resource to the people of Sierra Leone. Recognising the volatility of the situation between the first round vote and the highly competitive run-off vote for the president, IRN invited leading political analysts and electoral experts to share their views with the public. In this way they ensured that credible information and a clear voice was injected into the highly charged public debate.
The National Election Watch
The second CSO supported by SFCG during the elections was the National Election Watch (NEW), a coalition of over 375 diverse local and international civil society organisations including SFCG, Oxfam and the Sierra Leonean teachers’ union and farmers’ association. Based on its experiences during the 2002 and 2004 elections, NEW developed a strategy to guide its engagement in the 2007 process. The organisation focused on transforming its organisational structure and capacity in order to be able to:
- deploy a trained observer at every polling station;
- implement a rapid reporting mechanism to get a clear snapshot of activities across the country;
- conduct a parallel vote count.
The SFCG, working with energetic and dedicated individuals from all of the member organisations, coordinated and provided technical assistance to one of the most extensive election monitoring efforts ever undertaken in Africa. Under the broad leadership of the strategic management committee, and a decentralised decision-making structure, NEW effectively achieved all three of its strategic goals over the election period, none of which had been done before in Sierra Leone.
In order to deploy a trained observer at every polling station, NEW was able to use the knowledge and networks of its member organisations. Through the network, they mobilised observers in every small town and village. They also placed trained civil society observers in 97% of the polling stations around the country.
‘In the polling centres in the rural areas, many of the people look at the polling centre manager as the boss’, noted NEW member Andrew Sellu. ‘The presence of NEW changed that. Our observers in their black t-shirts made people aware that they could vote their own mind. The NEC officials said it was good that NEW was there.’ Members of an EU delegation in the remote frontier Kailahun district later remarked on the encouraging sight of black-shirted NEW observers in every post they visited.
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Election observers at a polling station in Freetown. |
‘Incident report coordinators’ were integrated into NEW’s district response. Their role was to solve problems at the local level and lodge reports on serious incidents for inclusion in the NEW database. These coordinators effectively filtered out the problems that were likely to impede or affect a fair vote from other more manageable problems. In this way, the incident coordinators were able to act as conflict managers and improve the speed at which genuine concerns could be raised with the appropriate district authorities. In the second round of voting, 32 incidents of multiple voting were observed and recorded in the database in the NEW headquarters. After the elections, the NEC was able to use the information in the database to assist them in investigations of allegations of voter fraud.
NEW succeeded in its second goal of creating and operating a rapid reporting system for electoral observers. With technical support from the National Democratic Institute, NEW randomly selected a representative sample of polling stations, referred to as ‘priority centres’. From this sample, the trained observers were to send a telephone text message to NEW's database. Each observer gave answers to selected questions on the ‘observer checklist’. Over one-third of these stations were in areas which did not have mobile phone coverage. This meant that some observers had to walk for hours to participate in the exercise, while others had to cross rivers and flooded areas in boats. Nevertheless, within the first 36 hours after the polls closed in the first round, NEW had received information from 72% of the priority centres; this figure rose to 93% during the second round.
This rapid response gave the leadership of NEW an almost instant snapshot of the situation across the country. Based on this data they were able to deliver a credible and timely preliminary report to the media, declaring the first round ‘free, fair and credible’, and the run off ‘calm and credible’.
The third goal NEW achieved was in mounting a successful parallel vote count. Over both rounds, and using the data sent in by the priority centre observers within the first hours, NEW was able to confirm the final result announced by the NEC; on each occasion the government’s results matched NEW’s snapshot. This fact lent credence to the integrity of NEC’s data and also demonstrated the high degree of accuracy in NEW’s rapid reporting system.
By achieving these three goals during the elections, NEW came of age as a national civil society movement. NEW’s success was recognised by nearly all the international observer missions. ECOWAS, the European Union and the National Democratic Institute praised NEW and Sierra Leone’s civil society organisations for their valuable contributions to ensuring the transparency of the elections.
Lasting results
Beyond the development of NEW and IRN and the peaceful outcome of the elections, the long-term legacy of the 2007 poll will be the confidence and energy created by successfully bringing together a civilian army of civil society poll watchers.
In the past, civil society tended to be dominated by an unchanging elite, unrepresentative of the wider voices in Sierra Leone. This election brought forward a new generation of civil society members, who are energised and ready to participate in the development of their country. By fostering new partnerships at the local, regional and national levels, the real impact of the work of the SFCG, IRN and NEW will be seen over the next few years as new projects, synergies and ideas emerge from the crucible of the 2007 elections.
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