The Secretary General for the All Political Parties Association (APPA-SL) Ibrahim Sesay has risen concerned over the 11% threshold for both parliament and local council under the PR district block system. He made this statement during a press conference held on Thursday 2 March, 2023 at New Brooks Fields Hotel in Freetown.
According to him the PR system strengthens inclusivity and called for increase political participation in the country’s politics, as is more representatives and would accelerate gender empowerment and promotes national cohesion and help in the consolidation of peace.
Mr. Sesay also said that giving the aforementioned, APPA-SL therefore needs a political system that will help in consolidating the national peace and cohesion and eliminating the political barriers presently surrounding our body politics.
“APPA-SL has been working tirelessly to help in harmonizing divergent views on issues of national importance and subsequently engaged the government accordingly. In a bid to actualize the desired goals of the PR System, APPA-SL from its press release dated 31st October 2022 calls on ECSL to collectively review the regulations with registered political parties as to what should be the threshold or percentage that will determine a seat in parliament or local councils, as the primary focus of a PR system is to allow for greater political participation and fairness by creating a platform for the smaller political parties to be represented in both parliament and local councils,” he explained.
The Secretary General stressed that If that is the case, APPA-SL is of the view that the calculation of the threshold for the allocation of seats to political parties would have been taking into consideration international best practices that is best fitting for us as a nation.
He expressed that APPA-SL is completely dissatisfied with the 11.9% threshold and the regulation that strictly prohibit political parties who cannot fulfilled the payment of all candidature fees based on the allocated seats to that district for both parliament and local councils will not be allowed to contest in that district, as in the previous elections, most political parties pay for only areas or seats they have assurances of winning and strong supports.
