The United Nations resident representative in Sierra Leone on Tuesday warned that the war-scarred West African country cannot afford to fail to organise credible elections, ahead of weekend polls.
Sierra Leoneans will vote on Saturday for the first time in five years, and only the second elections since the country emerged from a decade of one of the most brutal wars in modern history.
”I think there is no choice here, they [elections] have to go well,” said Victor Angelo, head of the UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone, the successor of a peacekeeping mission that closed in December 2005.
”There is no other option and I hope that everybody understands … that the option of not going well is not an option,” Angelo said.
The presidential and legislative vote, five years after the end of the war, is hoped to secure lasting peace and spur the world’s second least-developed country from searing poverty.
”These elections have to be properly conducted, these elections have to be violence-free and they have to free of rigging,” he said.
”If they are credible, they are a major indicator of peace consolidation, [showing] that the gains made in the last five years are becoming sustainable,” he said.
Technical preparations for the elections were in order and security forces had been well trained to handle the vote, he said.
Pre-poll violence had been very localised, he added.
”Compared to the past, this has been minimal. Compared with many other developing countries, the level of violence so far has been very contained”. — Sapa-AFP