According to the National Electoral Commission (NEC), which runs the country’s elections, 1,198 people will vie for positions as local councillors or mayors this July.  The majority of candidates represent the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) and the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP), the country’s dominant political parties.  However, in districts across the country, people are noting that the number of women on the ballot is distressingly low.  [Stay tuned for exact numbers later this week.] 

In Kailahun District, one of my Sierra Leonean colleagues working on election issues argued that women tried to secure nominations but that party leadership denied them the opportunity to run.  She noted that even women who currently hold local council positions lost nominations to male candidates. 

These days it’s popular to talk about including women in government but it’s rare to see parties actually follow through on their verbal commitments and back women for positions of power.  In December 2007, IPS ran a story that quoted leaders from the APC and SLPP promising that the parties would strongly support women in the local council elections:

"Women are going to feature prominently," said Victor Bockarie Foe, secretary general of the ruling All People's Congress, in reference to the candidates for local elections. Just over 11 percent of candidates that ran for parliament earlier this year were women.

There was more of the same from the main opposition grouping, the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

"We want to ensure that government is taken closer to the people," said SLPP Secretary General Jacob Jusu Saffa. "We will robustly support and campaign for women at the forthcoming local elections."     

My colleague in Kailahun, however, did not see women’s failure to obtain nominations as a result of men’s discrimination against women.  “Many women are not very well educated,” she noted.  “Their communities have been told by NGOs and the government that they need well-educated representatives so their support for the women has declined.”  My colleague’s perspective highlights the structural discrimination women face in Sierra Leone.  Clearly, if women do not receive access to educational and economic opportunities at the same rate as men they will also continue to face discrimination and marginalization in the political realm.

Some women are fighting back after losing a nomination, my colleague told me.  One woman in Kailahun District has decided to run as an independent after the SLPP failed to award her a nomination.  “She is loved by her community and they have urged her to run,” my colleague explained.  However, party loyalty runs deep in Sierra Leone.  Any woman bucking those structures will have a tough race on her hands.