National Electoral Commission (NEC) Executive Secretary, William A. Davies, said yesterday at their budget hearing for 2018 that 1,539 people have been referred for prosecution for double registration during the voter registration period.
“We have done the matching and de-duplication process, and during our adjudication we came up with about 53,000 suspects. All of these names have gone through the adjudication process and to date only 1,539 we consider as duplicates,” he said.
The locations of the duplications were not disclosed. Davies said that the names have been kept aside in a separate register. “We have consulted our legal retainers and they’ve advised us. We are now taking the necessary legal steps to ensure that they are duly prosecuted because it is one of the offences in the Public Elections Act if you deliberately attempt to register more than once you must face the law,” he said.
He said that the provisional voter register contains 3,133,413 names and the boundary delimitation for wards and constituencies in line with the Provinces Act 2017 (CAP 60) has been completed.
Presenting their 2018 budget summary, Davies said that a total of Le159 billion has been analysed. They need Le23.3 billion for staff costs, electoral cost, which includes Referendum, Paramount Chieftaincy elections, Bye elections for local councils, Parliamentary/Paramount Chief member of Parliament and Village Head and public sensitization is Le116 billion, programme and recurrent costs are Le14.7 billion and capital expenditure (Construction) is Le4.8 billion.
Director of Budget, Matthew Dingie, asked about how they accounted for funds they collect from nomination fees, whether local council elections will be conducted for the new districts and also why during his presentation no mention was made of the general elections.
In his response, Davies said that nomination fees are being paid to the Administrator and Registrar General. “We write the cheque to them as initially the monies were paid to NRA but later we were advised to pay directly to the Administrator.”
“Both Parliamentary and local council elections will be conducted for the new administrative districts. We now have a register that shows the 16 electoral districts, so we now have a voter register for bother Falaba and Karene. They all now have constituencies and wards,” he said.
He referred to issues between the elections and referendum as a tricky thing. “We expect the funds that we require for March general elections to be committed to the commission in 2017, so basically that is why we have not made mention of the overflowing cost to 2018.”
He went on to say that all processes between now and December should have been completed. “The development partners were saying that the referendum is standing in the way of elections, so they have agreed with the Ministry of Finance to take it out of the elections program, in terms of their funding regarding the elections.”
Concerning those who were not able to meet the voter registration period especially those in the diaspora, he said, “It is in the law, the technical thing about voter register is that you have to register within a specific period and you have to be physically present. Going into the future we will consider that, but the civil register is on-going, so when we update the register new names will automatically be updated for future elections.”
In addition, Commissioner, Miatta French, said that people have to look at it in a broader perspective. “We run elections and we are responsible to register voters and the issue of diaspora voters is important and it is not that we don’t think about them. Even before we do home-based registration there is a census that guides us, as to how many people we are to register.”
“We cannot go and register blindly. Otherwise, nothing we do is going to be credible. There are problems enough when we see people in queues and people still call doubt the authenticity of the register. How much more… We go and come back with a register of sierra Leoneans in the diaspora, no political party will accept that.”
French said, there has to be a cut-off point. “As the political parties are pressing us for the final figures because at the end of the day the results have to tally. You cannot keep bringing people into the voter register up to the election day because they will ask where are those numbers coming from. We are trying to be as inclusive as we can but we don’t want to compromise the credibility of the process,” she noted.
ZJ/22/8/17
By Zainab Joaque
Wednesday August 23, 2017.
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