By Mohamed Gibril Sesay
There is something happening to National Election Watch (NEW) that should trouble everyone who cares about Sierra Leone’s democracy. It should particularly trouble those who aspire to lead the country. For more than three months, a court injunction arising from a dispute over NEW’s April 2026 internal elections has effectively restrained the organisation’s national operations. What superficially began as a disagreement over an internal election, or more sinisterly, an attempt at state capture of the organization, has therefore developed into something much larger: the disabling of one of Sierra Leone’s most important democratic institutions.
I particularly want to hear from those seeking to lead this country, in the APC, SLPP, other political parties, civil society, lawyers, journalists and ordinary citizens.
What is happening to NEW? And why is there so little public concern about it? I ask partly because I remember where NEW came from.
I was there at the beginning
In September 2001, I was Director of the NDI/FORDI Resource Center in Freetown. As Sierra Leone prepared for the elections that would follow the civil war, the Resource Center organised a residential workshop at what was then Milton Margai College at Goderich.
I worked closely then with Joe Hall of NDI, an American colleague who loved Philadelphia sandwiches at Crown Bakery, and who talked so often about his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, that some of us almost came to know Charleston without ever visiting it.
Sixteen civil society organisations attended that workshop. We worked on principles for domestic election observation and developed a Code of Conduct for non-partisan observers. By December 2001, eighteen organisations had come together in the coalition that became National Election Watch.
They included the Centre for the Coordination of Youth Activities, Campaign for Good Governance, Network Movement for Justice and Development, Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Bar Association, Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, Sierra Leone Labour Congress, Sierra Leone Teachers Union, National Union of Sierra Leone Students, Women’s Forum, the Academic Staff Association of the University of Sierra Leone, FORDI and others. They represented a remarkable range of Sierra Leonean civil society.
Its first chairman was the convivial Rev. Llewellyn B. Rogers-Wright of the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone.
NEW initially operated from the NDI/FORDI Resource Center at 7 Lightfoot Boston Street. We were not creating an APC organisation. We were not creating an SLPP organisation. We were trying to build a Sierra Leonean democratic institution. By early 2005, I had left the operational side of civil society for Academia and consultancies, though I still served in a number of prominent civil society organization boards for a while. On one of my consultancy stint, I was recruited to do some analytical, language and other editing stuff to the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It involved a lot of close readings of the draft, as well as access to documents and recordings. And you know marabu pikin dem, taught to memorise the Quran early in life, reading certain things got easily memorized. So it was with me – most of the gory details stayed in my memory: of a mother forced to breastfeed the severed head of her son; of a man forced to get the pepper, maggi and onions that would be used to cook and eat him; of young boys forced to kill their fathers. But I saw even within organizations hijacked by wicked men and atrocious tendencies, resistance to wickedness. I saw karmohs in Pujehun, Kailahun, Bonthe and Kenema opposed the hijacking, I read about women resisting the imposition of no-women-should -wear-trouser rule. Some of them lost their lives in the process, or became silent and opted out after threats by a prevailing disposition that convinced itself than victory over a depraved rebellion depended on depraved tactics. Many of these accounts are in the TRC Reports; but Sierra Leoneans don’t read these things, except perhaps for the references to recommendations they pick and choose, shredding their impact in the process. The other details are locked away in electronic archives on servers somewhere in California, not to be opened for decades, perhaps their more gory details would have lost their shock or revenge; although this also raises issues of data sovereignty. But I digress, let me return to NEW.
When institutions lead
Economists sometimes talk about a leading sector: a part of an economy that develops faster, builds capacity and helps pull other sectors forward. Democracies can also have what I would call leading institutions. They move ahead. They develop professional routines. They accumulate experience. They learn from their mistakes. Their networks widen. Their credibility grows because people see them operating repeatedly under different governments and different political conditions.
NEW became such an institution.
It deployed more than 2,000 observers for the 2002 elections. And election after election, it became more organised. Its observer networks expanded. Its methods became more sophisticated. Its partnerships grew. It developed stronger district structures, observation techniques and data systems. Its work gradually expanded from election-day observation to monitoring much of the electoral cycle. Its public statements became increasingly important. Its coalition spread across the country.
Today NEW is a coalition of about 494 civil society and non-governmental organizations, operating through 17 district teams, five regional coordinators, five regional secretaries, a Strategic Management Committee, Secretariat and National Meeting.
That is institutional growth. And institutions that take more than twenty years to build should matter to everybody, whatever party happens to hold power.
Then came 2023
The 2023 elections put NEW under perhaps its greatest pressure.
NEW deployed about 6,000 observers, including specially trained observers stationed at a statistically representative sample of 750 polling stations. It used the Process and Results Verification for Transparency, or PRVT, methodology that it had previously used in the 2007, 2012 and 2018 elections. In those earlier elections, its statistical estimates had been consistent with the official presidential results.
In 2023 they were not.
NEW reported that its statistical evidence did not support the official presidential result announced by the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone. Its estimate placed the SLPP candidate between 47.7 and 53.1 per cent and the APC candidate between 43.8 and 49.2 per cent. On NEW’s analysis, therefore, no candidate had crossed the constitutional 55 per cent threshold required to avoid a runoff.
NEW did not stand alone in raising serious questions about the electoral results and tabulation process. The Carter Center said that it had confidence in NEW’s methodology and expressed concern that the official results did not correspond with NEW’s data. It repeatedly called on ECSL to publish polling-station-level results so that the figures could be independently checked. The European Union Election Observation Mission separately identified statistical inconsistencies and transparency problems surrounding the presidential results.
The Carter Center’s subsequent final report went further in describing significant irregularities and a serious lack of transparency during tabulation, while also making clear the limits of what observers could conclusively establish without fuller access to electoral data.
The Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors, GNDEM, defended NEW’s methodology and its right to conduct independent observation. NEW had done what an election-monitoring institution exists to do: it watched, collected information and reported what its analysis showed. One may disagree with NEW. One may scrutinise its methodology. One may challenge its conclusions. That is democracy too.
But disagreement with an institution is different from disabling the institution. And a trajectory to ‘kontleh’ since 2023 could be discerned.
The pressure to kontleh did not disappear
First, there was a dramatic scene at the airport, where there was an attempt to stop the NEW chairperson from travelling out of the county. There were threats on social media; there were body shaming; there were the usual deployment of cultural forms of abuse.
In March 2026, GNDEM publicly expressed concern about what it described as attacks and intimidation directed at NEW and its leadership. It linked these tensions to NEW’s publication of its 2023 findings.
Around the same period, a proposal emerged in Parliament for an investigation into NEW’s finances, funding and accountability. On 31 March 2026, however, Speaker of Parliament Segepoh Solomon Thomas suspended the motion, citing the sensitivity of the matter and the need for careful consideration.
NEW meanwhile embarked upon an internal democratic transition.
It conducted district-level elections across its operational districts in March 2026. Of 497 organisations reportedly on its voter register, 442 participated. No litigation arose from those elections. Note this point: the present dispute did not begin with the whole organisation.
Then, elections for a new national leadership were slated for its National Meeting of 28–29 April 2026. It was a residential one at the SLTU Hotel at Kissy. Frenzied moments. The Chairperson Marcella Samba Sesay decided not to run again, despite support from many that she should. A number of senior public officials were reportedly seen seeking to get a more compliant leadership. Favours and more to come were reportedly dished and promised. Ransford Wright of the Independent Radio Network (IRN) was the electoral head for the elections.
Three candidates contested for chairperson. Charles Keif-Kobai, a former student union leader in the late 1990s and presently of the CSO FORWARD received 41 of 68 valid votes, or 60.3 per cent; Abigail Stevens of the Center for the Coordination of Youth Activities (CCYA) received 17 votes; Abdul Karim Habib of the Network Movement for Democracy and Human Rights (NMDHR)received 10. There were great many numbers of major national and international stakeholders at the meeting, including the Sierra Leone Teachers Union, the Inter Religious Council, and the Sierra Leone Labour Congress. There were celebrations, eating and patting of backs, those who did not win positions congratulated those who did. Everything looked set to move forward with the FORWARD man. Then about a month later, Mr. Habib and Madam Stevens challenged the process in court.
From political pressure to an internal dispute
They have a right to do so. So I am in no way insinuating that they are part and parcel of an attempt to hijack or capture the organization. People may conclude what they want to conclude; it is their democratic right to do so. I come here to talk about a pattern of pressure on NEW, not to dig individual motives. Madam Stevens and Mr. Habib belong to a circle of respectable individuals. I come here not to bury NEW, but to praise it. It is a vanguard democratic institutions of our country in name and practice.
Madam Stevens and Mr. Habib asked the court to determine whether the NEW April elections were valid. They allege uncertainty about which constitution governed the election, alteration of the agreed electoral sequence, problems with the voters’ register, participation by allegedly ineligible delegates and conflicts of interest involving election officials.
NEW disputes those claims. That is precisely what courts are for: to adjudicate competing claims. And courts are honorable institutions. They are not involved in lawfare; they have not been weaponized against interests that are read to be against the powers that are. Which is why there must be no insinuations that their actions are dishonourable, or that they practice what one Ghanaian jurist calls the ‘jurisprudence of executive supremacy’ or that they too could be captive institutions, their captured aided by executive control of their purse strings, promotion, or tenure. Although this is a democracy, and in a democracy people have a right to hold certain beliefs, those are not beliefs I want to talk about here. I simply want to ask, why this fretful silence over the ‘kontleh’ of NEW.
Why must the whole institution stop?
The petitioners did far more than simply ask the court to determine who properly won an election. Their motion sought an extraordinarily wide restraint. It asked that NEW, its officers, agents, servants, employees, representatives and others be prevented from functioning, representing the organisation, exercising powers, making decisions, entering agreements, convening meetings, dealing with donors, or managing NEW’s finances, programmes, assets and operations. It also sought a caretaker committee.
An ex parte interim injunction was issued on 15 June 2026, and NEW says it was served NEW on 16 June.
We are now in October.
This raises a question larger than who won NEW’s internal election. Why should a dispute between candidates for leadership stop an entire national democratic institution from functioning? The court should certainly hear the petitioners. If the election breached NEW’s constitution, determine that. If particular votes were invalid, determine that. If the process must be rerun, determine that. But why must NEW itself cease functioning while those questions are determined?
The seven-day question
There is another matter requiring explanation.
Order 35 Rule 1 of Sierra Leone’s High Court Rules expressly addresses urgent ex parte injunctions. It provides that an order granted ex parte “shall not remain in force for more than 7 days.” It further provides that, absent an application extending its validity, the order lapses after seven days unless the court otherwise directs.
Perhaps an extension was subsequently granted in this case. If so, that should form part of the public explanation.
But an institution of NEW’s democratic importance should not remain functionally frozen month after month without the substantive dispute being determined as quickly as possible. Justice concerns the rights of the petitioners. It also concerns everyone affected by the remedy. I don’t want to be reminded of that Krio proverb: nor take shobul for cut naybul. I don’t want to believe that a pattern of intimidation is built on this. Oh no, I refuse to believe that the ‘men pikinization’ of citizens seen as opposed to those governing our country is becoming entrenched. I am a teacher; I taught many now holding high office in this country, so let me define men pikinization. Men pikin is a great cultural institution in the country. It plays a great role in sustaining better destinies for many. But it also has its very bad sides, because of the way many men pikin are treated in relation to the children of the guardian. This bad and unequal treatment, this wickedness is what I mean here as men pikinization: a double movement, a treatment of adults as pikin dem, and on top of that, as men pikin dem in this bad, wicked and unequal sense.
Fifteen livelihoods, hundreds of organisations
NEW is not only its elected chairman. It has a professional Secretariat. According to the information available to me, approximately 15 employees depend upon that Secretariat for their livelihoods. They were not candidates in the disputed election. They were appointed employees. Why should their work and livelihoods be casualties of an electoral dispute to which they were not parties?
Then multiply the problem. NEW represents hundreds of member organisations across Sierra Leone. The dispute concerns two aggrieved candidates and the validity of an internal election. The remedy, however, reaches through the whole coalition.
Projects stopped, accountability interrupted
There is another irony. An injunction intended partly to protect organisational integrity may itself make accountability more difficult. NEW was implementing an International IDEA-funded project and another project under Women and Youth Democracy Engagement. Its Secretariat was preparing an end-of-project report for International IDEA, a quarterly activity report for WYDE and funding proposals when the litigation arose. Affidavit in Opposition
More strikingly, NEW says its Secretariat was undergoing an audit by PKF London on behalf of the European Union when the injunction intervened. It was also engaging institutions on implementation of the Tripartite Recommendations and electoral legal reforms ahead of the 2028 elections.
These activities concern donor accountability, electoral reform and preparations for the next national elections. Who completes those reports? Who answers the auditors? Who accounts for project resources? Who participates in electoral reform discussions? I listened to Reverend Lahai, NEW’s national coordinator speak on these issues and my heart ached. I heard about the contempt of court slammed on the outgoing Chairperson Marcella Samba Sesay for speaking on these issues.
Elections will not wait
Sierra Leone’s democratic calendar does not stop because NEW has been injuncted. Electoral preparations continue. Election Management Bodies continue meeting. Reforms continue being discussed. Political parties continue preparing.
Yet one of the country’s principal citizen election-observation coalitions says it has refrained from strategic meetings because it is under a court order. This creates a democratic absence. And democratic absences are rarely just that.
Where are those who want to lead?
This brings me particularly to those seeking to lead, or who are concerned about the direction of this country. They speak about electoral reform. They speak about democracy and 2028.
Then they should be asked about the institutional conditions under which the next elections will be observed. What is their position on independent domestic election observation? What principles should govern the treatment of organisations whose findings displease governments? Should an internal leadership dispute be allowed to immobilise a national election-monitoring coalition for months?
These are questions for APC, the SLPP and other political parties. The issue should not be whether NEW is “ours” or “theirs.” Many of us who founded NEW went on to other things – some supported the APC, others the SLPP, others other parties. But NEW held on above the fray, building its reputation, making its observation public, sometimes they benefitted the SLPP, other times the APC. But the goal was to push forward believability in governance processes. This is why I believe the issue should be about the presence in the land of what I would call believable institutions. These are institutions whose words and processes in the sectors they find themselves are believable, not necessarily because the police are backing them, or we are forced to accept them at the point of a gun. That would be gun-point governance.
Already we have seen an institution of great believability, the Audit Service, brought down; already we have seen an institution that should be at the center of believability in democratic processes, the electoral commission transformed into some gun-point institution; already we have seen a process of getting believable governing data, the census pushed under; already we have seen the passport process made less believable by other states, a reason given for visa restrictions on Sierra Leoneans. And are we now seeing a repeat to kontleh a believable institution, one created by citizens to aid our democratic and governance processes?
I am teacher; I am very concerned about the rise of stupidity in public discourses. Otherwise brilliant people in school or their professional sectors would suddenly become stupid under the glare of the bright lights of the public discourse, be it about land issues, or constitutional processes, or talking about the rising and unbearable cost of living or investigations into discontent: gun point governance filling in for reasoned arguments, or the feh feh feh of air-conditioners carry void thoughts into their frontal lobes, and believing that people are damn too daffla and stupid in the country not to see the holes in their thoughts. But this is not the point I want to raise here. That will be the topic of another write up. But when the feh-feh-feh stops, or there is no longer no gun point at the tip of their arguments, they too would realize their folly. I am reminded of a commission of inquiry near the mid 1990s, relating to a senior governance man. He had asked the Hamburg Port Consultant running Water-Quay then to continue paying what they allegedly paid him to secure the contract, to his children should anything happen to him. Just imagine that. The judge overseeing the inquiry asked, ‘my dear friend, why would you do that? He replied, I never knew this day would come. The thing is, feh feh feh had gone up his head. And they think the immunity that presidents generally enjoy they the advisers and enablers of so much wrong doing would also enjoy. Gbei.
But I digress, I was talking about NEW, a believable institution that is under grave difficulties, an institution built by citizens as bulwark against the recurrence of the gory details I talked about in the TRC report. They are the better Karmohs fighting against wicked tendencies in this land that we love. Should this land allow them to be silenced again?
I remember Goderich
I remember that residential workshop at Goderich in 2001. I remember the NDI/FORDI Resource Center from which we organised it. I remember Joe Hall. I remember the civil society organisations coming together. And I remember the basic idea behind what we were doing.
Sierra Leone needed citizens who could watch elections independently of those competing to win them. Almost twenty-five years later, NEW has become much larger than that first workshop.
The two petitioners deserve their day in court. Their grievances should be heard fairly and determined quickly. NEW must also answer legitimate questions about its own governance. But a day in court should not require institutional paralysis. The dispute is about an election. Determine the election dispute. Don’t kontleh a leading sector of our democratic journey
The situation deserves public attention. It deserves the attention of government.
It deserves the attention of civil society.
And it deserves the attention of every person who now asks Sierra Leoneans to regard him or her as a future national leader. For nearly twenty-five years, NEW has watched Sierra Leone’s elections. At this moment, Sierra Leone should also be watching what happens to NEW.
#sierraleonenews