Political party agents in many parts of the country have been accused of engaging in parallel voter registration during the first day of NEC’s nationwide voter registration exercise last Monday.
According to NEC, the act contravenes election regulation and have therefore raised strong objection to its conduct.
An Awoko investigation team that was out and about on day two of the registration exercise undoubtedly captured on camera agents of both the APC and SLPP engaged in open parallel voter registration exercises. The agents were caught at the Registration Center No. 14183 (Hope Preparatory School), New England in Ward 387, Constituency 110.
The Awoko team recorded party agents requesting registration forms from registered voters and entering their details in ledgers. Those who try to escape from them were chased by the agents to retrieve information from them.
In Ward 387, two APC agents; one had what looked like an original registration tracking list from the party with numbers of potential voters who had registered, questioned or rejected at the center with no names or identifying information. The other agent had an exercise book with the names and particulars of each registered voter who had gone through the process.
Some SLPP party agent were seen with tally sheets with columns for name, address, sex, date of birth, age, mother’s name, father’s name, occupation, place of birth, etc. The details on the SLPP tally sheets clearly replicated what are on the NEC registration form.
Leonard Bologun Koroma, APC National Coordinator for the 2012 Election, denied that APC agents were involved in parallel voter registration. He said the act was illegal and that if they had indeed engaged in the act, it was not the official position of the APC. “We have every confidence in the NEC as being competent to organize the election and its processes,” he said and warned all APC party agents to desist from the act.
J.J.Saffa speaking on Radio Democracy 98.1 yesterday morning confirmed that the SLPP agents were merely recording names of people who have registered in particular centers as a way of confirming in the final analysis the actual number of people registered in any given center. According to him, that does not tantamount to any parallel registration but a checking mechanism to ensure that the right things were done by NEC.
By Abibatu Kamara
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