The number of voter registration centres should be increased to avoid long distances between centres. The possibility of creating mobile registration teams should be considered in remote areas.

The position of the Human Rights Commission needs to be strengthened since its mandate includes monitoring of draft legislation, policies, programmes and administrative practices to ensure human rights compliance relevant for elections.

The Election Offences Courts should be operational from the beginning of the entire election period as defined in the law in order to avoid that the same kind of offences are simultaneously heard in Magistrate Courts and in the Election Offences Courts. Clarification also needs to be provided for appeals against the decisions of the Electoral Offences Courts.

Greater clarity should be developed in the legal framework clarifying jurisdiction issues between the courts and the NEC. A revision of the offences in the Electoral Laws Act is also necessary in order to further establish categories of offences and subsequently how these should be treated.

The authorities should immediately end the impunity that prevails with regard to election offences by prosecuting and holding to account those responsible for electoral offences.

A secure system for absentee voting for public servants on duty or travelling on official business on election day should be considered.

The office of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice should be separated in accordance with the recommendation of the Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The legal provision, which prevents independent candidates from contesting presidential elections, should be removed.

In accordance with international standards the racial requirements for citizenship by birth should be repealed to abolish the discrimination in the right to stand for office.

In line with the revision of the recommended restrictions placed on those public servants that are not allowed to stand in an election, the restrictions for these people to engage in politics should be revisited and adjusted to improve their rights to stand for election.

All Members of Parliament should be elected by universal suffrage and all reserved seats should be removed. This would entail the removal of the reserved seats for Paramount Chiefs to ensure parliament is elected by full popular vote.

In the long run political parties should be made more economically independent from donors by introducing a governmental financing scheme as suggested by the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance 2001.

The PPRC should be strengthened and provided with a sound financial basis to conduct its constitutional role to monitor political parties and to establish efficient Code Monitoring Committees. The Code of Conduct could include proportional sanctions in case of non-compliance and should include a commitment against using public resources for campaign purposes and greater capacity to regulate campaign spending, with consideration of introducing spending ceilings.

The requirement for registration for new political parties should not include unreasonable conditions such as extensive lease of office space. The grounds for deregistering a political party because of non-compliance with the requirements in the Political Parties Act should be defined and limited to specific infringements.

To increase the integrity and credibility of the process all polling officials’ journals should be included in the Tamper Evident Envelopes and forwarded to the Tally Centre to facilitate the quality control process.

An additional copy of the final voters’ register should be displayed at polling stations to allow voters to find the location of their allocated polling station and check their names.

Reconciliation and counting procedures should be revised. Apart from the standard ballot paper accounting all marks in the final voter list should be counted and recorded and be compared with the number of ballot papers cast.

The NEC should improve its communication channels to ensure information is communicated in a timely manner to all levels of its administration and to the electorate even in the most remote locations.

A permanent budget should be established to ensure that the NEC can undertake all its activities for the preparation and oversight of elections. This budget should be subject to parliamentary approval.

The decision of the NEC, not to recurit polling staff involved in irregularities during previous elections should be enforced. To ensure transparency in the recruitment of polling staff, lists of recruited staff should be published in order to allow political parties and citizens to challenge appointments.

Qualified staff at district level should be retained on a permanent basis to provide more professional structures. A permanent presence in the districts would enable NEC to further increase the capacity of NEC district offices and would enable key components of the election cycle such as voter education, continuous voter registration and training for constituency election officers to be more effective.

The independence of the Commissioners of the NEC from any political party influence should also be strengthened in order for them to undertake their responsibilities in overseeing and ensuring the credibility of future elections in an impartial manner.

Un travail de longue durée doit être entrepris pour structurer, organiser et développer les capacités de la société civile dans le domaine de la démocratisation. L’observation nationale devrait être renforcée dans le respect du pluralisme des initiatives. Plus de rigueur dans la méthodologie utilisée et dans la formation dispensée pourraient accroître l’utilité et la crédibilité d’une telle observation.

Il est important de mettre en oeuvre la réglementation existante sur le financement des campagnes électorales et d’instaurer des mécanismes de contrôle efficace dans ce domaine afin de corriger les inégalités importantes constatées dans les moyens utilisés par les candidats.

Il est nécessaire de doter la Haute Autorité de la Presse et de l’Audiovisuel (HAPA) de véritables moyens d’action afin de renforcer son rôle de gardien de l’application des règles et de la déontologie, mais aussi de lui permettre de prendre des initiatives pour développer la production et favoriser la libre concurrence et le pluralisme de l’information.