RUF urges ECOWAS to intervene over elections

Former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP) are appealing to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to intervene in forthcoming elections in Sierra Leone following a declaration by the country's electoral commission that RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, was ineligible to stand as a presidential candidate, Sierra Leone Web reported on Thursday. Sierra Leone's National Electoral Commission (NEC) last week barred Sankoh last week from standing in the 14 May elections because he is not a registered voter. Under national legislation this makes him ineligible. RUFP interim chairman, Mike Lamin, who was in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, on Thursday to meet the Senegalese president and ECOWAS chairman, Abdoulaye Wade, blamed the Sierra Leonean government for the current situation. "For two years he and other detainees of the RUF have been (held in an) undisclosed location without being charged," SLW reported Lamin as saying. "This prevented (them) from registering." Sankoh is in prison on murder charges relating to an incident outside his home in the capital, Freetown in May 2000 which left over 20 people dead. He was detained shortly after the event and was not seen in public again until his first court appearance on 4 March. Following Sankoh's barring, the RUFP failed to nominate an alternative presidential candidate despite the NEC's 24-hour extension for nomination papers to be submitted. The deadline expired at 1600 GMT on Wednesday. RUFP secretary-general Pallo Bangura told reporters on Wednesday that due to "logistical problems", the party had been unable to decide on a candidate and would not be contesting the presidential elections but would take part in the parliamentary polls. Prior to Wednesday's deadline, a divided RUFP had decided to nominate Bangura and Peter Vandi as its presidential and vice-presidential candidate, SLW quoted sources as saying. However, party spokesman Gibril Massaquoi reportedly disagreed with the nominations, allegedly made by RUFP interim leader Issa Sesay and others, saying that the party's rank-and-file would only support Sankoh as its presidential candidate. The transformation of the RUF into a political party was one of the key provisions of the Lome Peace Accord to allow it to "participate fairly in the electoral process. That remains to be done," SLW reported Lamin as saying on Thursday. Lamin added that ECOWAS, in its capacity as moral guarantor to the peace agreement, was obliged to follow it up. ECOWAS was a guarantor of the 1999 Lome Peace Accord signed in the Togolese capital by Foday Sankoh and Sierra Leonean president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.