The National Elections Watch (NEW) have raised concerns over the voter Exhibition process. According to a NEW press release, the second day of exhibition was marred with serious challenges exposing National Electoral Commission’s (NEC) unpreparedness.
National Election Watch (NEW) is a coalition of local and international organizations in Sierra Leone with an objective of supporting free, fair and peaceful elections. The organization is also part of Standing Together of Democracy Consortium in Sierra Leone.
The NEW press release states, at the start of the Voter Exhibition Process, not all centres were opened due to the absence of exhibition staff and materials. The turnout at exhibition centres was very low and there were no security personnel or political party agents present.
NEW disclosed that the voter exhibition is an activity in the electoral process to ensure registrants confirmation, corrections, inclusion, objection, rejection and re-registration and so critical to the credibility and integrity of the Final Voters Register (FVR).
“The unprecedented challenges facing the voter exhibition process clearly brings out the unpreparedness of the NEC to undertake the activity. NEW urges the Government to provide the required resources for NEC to efficiently and effectively conduct the electoral cycle processes within the prescribed timeline in consonance with electoral laws and regulations ensuring that elections are held on 7 March 2018”.
NEW notes that the exhibition process is very important in the electoral cycle and so they are concerned. “Civic and voter education around this process is grossly inadequate contributing to the low turnout. The emergence of loss and misplacement of data creating the need for re-registration justifies the compelling need for the intensification of voter education to avoid the disenfranchisement of eligible voters.”
NEW further observed, in some of the centres, NEC officials were inconsistent in the application of the exhibition procedures; in some centres the Provisional Voter Register was not displayed leading to overcrowding around the Exhibition Officer in a bid to verify details.
The Director of External Relations of NEC Albert Massaquoi said one of the main purposes of the voter exhibition is to correct information on the register and that is what they are doing.
The Public Relations Officer of opposition SLPP, Lawrence Leema Lahai, said so far they have not heard of issues except that they have received complaints from some people in Pujehun Districts that lot of names were removed from the list and that the time period for correction and inclusion of one week is short. This he said they will take to the attention of NEC.
BM/24/8/17
By Betty Milton
Friday August 25, 2017.
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