2002 Sierra Leone Elections: A Delegate's Journal

Writer Steve Maxwell kept a journal as a delegate of The Carter Center team observing Sierra Leone's May 14 election. The undertaking was part of the Center's ongoing effort to strengthen democracy in the West Africa region. The Carter Center was the only U.S.-based election observation delegation.

By Steve Maxwell
In late April, the message came I'd been waiting for since I retired and began doing volunteer writing projects for The Carter Center two years ago: I was invited to join a team to observe the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections in Sierra Leone. The team included three lawyers, two clerics, two former ambassadors, one former Liberian supreme court chief justice, one former president of an African country, and a "documentarian"-that would be me.

On my way to Sierra Leone, Dr. John Harker, our delegation advisor, told me the presidential race was highly contentious. Two of the nine candidates participated either in a past coup or rebellions that killed tens of thousands of people and left hundreds others with severed arms and legs. An election was a promising step toward a lasting peace and democracy, but it held the potential for creating more conflict.

On the runway of the Freetown, Sierra Leone, airport we caught our first sight of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force: a heavily sandbagged bunker with machine guns protruding. A fleet of U.N. helicopter gun ships appeared farther down the tarmac-a comforting and disturbing presence. They were there for a reason.

May 9: Reconnaissance Day
Dr. Harker and I embarked on intelligence-gathering trips into the capital of Freetown. Dr. Harker sought to learn what concerns lurk behind party platform issues that might bear watching by our observer team on election day.
I wanted the view from the street and went to visit an amputee camp. Hundreds of civil war victims were brought to this camp so their injuries could be treated.

A former baker with one arm told me how rebels captured him after he ventured from hiding to get salt to flavor the yams his family had been surviving on for three months, how it took several whacks to cut through his arm, and how frustrated he is that he can't support his family. "The worst thing," he says, "will be when my family leaves me behind to get help on their own."

At dinner that evening, Dr. Harker said the ex-combatants had staged a protest over the government's failure to give them the stipends they'd been promised for giving up their weapons. Rumors were abound that these ex-combatants plan to cut off roads linking the city with the peninsula where both the U.N. and Carter Center offices are based. No such action occurred, but the disgruntlement was unsettling.

May 10: A Chance to Prove Myself
The first seven of our 22-member observer group to arrive were deployed to observe Special Election Day, when soldiers and anyone else who would be on duty Election Day were allowed to vote. I'm teamed with two Liberians, a Muslim sheik and a civil society leader who had been recently jailed for "subversive" activity. In the coming days, our six colleagues from neighboring Liberia followed news of rebel movements on their capital city.

At one of the polling stations we covered, a CNN news team happened to be filming. When the rest of our delegation saw me on television the next day, their congratulations made me realize I had as much responsibility as them.

May 11: Learning Powers of Observation
We got a day of briefings before deployment, including an overview of the electoral process. The briefings covered unique concerns such as how the voting by thousands of people displaced by the war would be accommodated.

That afternoon supporters of the rebel group's political party and those of incumbent's party clashed during rallies. Rocks were thrown, the rebel party's headquarters was trashed, and several people were hospitalized. When we were deployed to our assigned cities, we were advised to meet with party leaders there to see how they are reacting to this incident.

May 12: A Shaky Start
Dr. Elwood Dunn and I were assigned to Bo, a city five hours along a heavily rutted road from Freetown. We arrived in Bo before dark and checked in to our "lodging." I was told I should prepare myself for the possibility of living in a hut. Waterbugs the size of walnuts greeted me. Whacking wildly with a rolled-up magazine, I quickly left the floor strewn with bug carcasses. Fatigue changed my strategy: I would make other intruders disappear by turning out the lights and going to sleep.

May 13: Getting to Know Bo
The day before the election we were to see how election officials were progressing and to meet members of local political parties and civil society. At the rebel group party's local office, a one-room house, several men besieged us with stories about how their Parliament candidates had been driven from their homes and how incumbent party supporters threatened polling agents. They were expecting a raid on their offices, just like in Freetown. They did assure us their party wants a peaceful election.

May 14: Election Day
Hundreds of people were waiting at 6 a.m. when we arrived at our first polling station. Many women had sleeping babies wrapped onto their backs. People were in remarkably good spirits and waited patiently. Many people hung around after they voted, socializing, and this became a problem at some precincts. Police in modern riot gear swept in more than once to dispel crowds.

Fracases occurred throughout the day at the city center polling station, but there was no violence. When we stopped by, riot police were dispersing the crowds, and I started to get out of the car to take photos. Dr. Dunn stopped me and asked our driver to leave. I would later tell him, "Because of your good sense, plus your generosity in loaning me your mosquito repellant when mine ran out, I probably owe my life to you."

Large crowds gathered at each precinct to witness the slow and methodical counting of the ballots. People cheered at the low totals for the rebel party candidate and again when they heard the incumbent president had easily won, by a wider margin than predicted, 70 percent compared to 22 percent for the nearest contender.

People then made their way in the darkness to the district election headquarters, where totals from all precincts would be announced. Between announcements, music blared from loudspeakers, prompting dancing. It was a joyous night for a people craving more of the peace they had experienced for the past four months under the current president.

May 15: Bye-bye Bo
Although results from villages outside Bo were still being recorded, we headed back to Freetown. I dozed briefly, dreaming of driving down the road with several happy African children clinging to our jeep. It was a blissful scene, void of threat-no rebels with machetes, riot police or UN tanks. Just happy kids, who may never experience the atrocities visited upon their parents.

Arriving at my Freetown hotel, I tell a worker there about my dream. "But even the youngest children here know war," he says. "They know it in their hungry stomachs."

Local election officials monitor a polling site where Sierra Leone's citizens cast their ballots in the May 2002 elections, observed by a delegation from The Carter Center.