By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
The main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) has demanded for the disclosure of disaggregated voter registration data and also urged for an independent audit of the registration process and the cancellation of the Proportional Representation (PR) electoral system.
This was disclosed in a press statement they issued last friday.
According to the release, APC through its agents deployed across the country during the registration process observed that both the Voter Verification/Registration and the subsequent Exhibition/Verification exercises were exceedingly problematic. In their opinion, they said both exercises faced ‘self-induced challenges and were deliberately designed and employed to create an unlevel playing field to disenfranchise’ a certain section of the electorate at the expense of our party’.
The release went on to note that, the data for thousands of citizens who had registered in previous election cycle was incomplete, incorrect or missing from the register. The party observed that, citizens were not allowed to do the necessary corrections or create a fresh registration.
“Instead, citizens were inappropriately referred to the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) whose mandate does not include voter registration,” the statement reads.
It also observed that, the ECSL violated its own rules and constitutional provisions on the eligibility/identification criteria for First time voters. The release quoted sections of the Public Elections Act which is said to stipulate that citizens are eligible to register either with a birth certificate or a naturalization certificate.
It also referenced the same act to permit an individual to use particulars of his birth, testimony of a member of the local Council in the area of the person’s residence, National Identification Number or any other satisfactory evidence of entitlement to be registered as voter.
The opposition alleged that all the aforementioned provisions were ignored, and in addition, the ECSL did not allow first time voters to register and also failed to issue rejection forms to people.
The release added that, the Exhibition/Verification exercise exposed what appears to be an ‘electoral strategy to skew’ the outcome of the June 2023 polls. It further stated that, thousands of people who reported to the designated Exhibition/Verification centres found out that the ECSL retained incomplete and incorrect data.
“Thousands of photos were absent along with names, addresses and other details being inaccurate. In these cases, correction to inclusion forms were not issued out to affected persons as mandated by law,” they observed.
The APC accused ECSL of deleting 257,123 (two hundred and fifty seven thousand, one hundred and twenty-three) registrants approximately 7% of total registrants, who they stated were duplicate voters.
The APC expressed concern that, the lack of transparency, openness, inclusiveness, of ECSL in its operations have considerably tarnished the integrity of both the voter registration processes. They also cited the numerous challenges the public encountered during the registration and verification exercises and the ECSL's unresponsiveness to stakeholders' to have substantially undermined public trust in the entire electoral process.
“We believe that these setbacks could result in significant voter apathy,” according to the release.
They referred to the performance of ECSL and what APC claimed is their persistent disregard for the Law so far, holds the potential for very chaotic elections which they said is a serious threat to the peace and security of the country.
The release observed that, all concerns raised and reported by the APC to the Elections Management Bodies (EMBs) and ECSL regarding the same, have not yielded results. They doubted the competence and trust to conduct free, peaceful and credible elections.
They referred to the PR System to be a product of its time, noting that the system will only work when there are no constituencies or wards for the purposes of public elections in the country.
Copyright © 2022 Politico (19/12/22)
