FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
17 June 2011
editorial
The Registration of voters started on the 5th May 2011 and is to end today 17th June 2011. The people who are qualified to register as voters are those who are Gambian citizens and have attained or would attain 18 years by 24 November 2011. The person has a right to be registered in the constituency where he/she resides or is born.
The other factors which bar a person from being registered as a voter in The Gambia is affliction with infirmity of mind, being imprisoned and being in possession of a voter’s card of another country. In our view the imprisonment of a person does not make the prisoner an alien in one’s country. Hence prisoners should have the right to vote.
It should now be obvious to everyone in the country that there are three key criteria to satisfy in order to be qualified to be registered as a voter, namely; citizenship, age and residential qualifications. Hence if one is a citizen of the Gambia, has attained the age of 18 years and is resident in a constituency or was born there one is empowered to be registered as a voter.
Each Gambian should ask the other whether he or she has gone to get a voter’s card or not. All those who refuse to get voter’s card should be told neither to complain about anything wrong with the country nor propagate the status quo. Such people should be constantly reminded that by their own volition they have decided to deprive themselves the power or voice to determine how Gambia is to be governed. All those who are qualified to be registered but have not gone to do so should be encouraged to do so now before it is too late. This is the first point.
Secondly, many people have seen people who have not satisfied the citizenship, age or residential qualification with voters’ cards. Many people have witnessed the same team of Attestants putting their thumbprints or appending their signatures to attestation forms numbering hundreds if not over a thousand in order to certify the age or citizenship of a voter.
Have some who may have fraudulently attested to forms succeeded in beating the system or could the anomalies be remedied? Many people are asking, what next?
Section 19 of the Elections Act makes it a requirement for the IEC to publish the list of voters for a period not less than ten days and place it in places that will make the list easily available for scrutiny by members of the public. According to section 132 of the Elections Act, if the IEC does not designate the places where the lists would be posted the public should expect it to be placed close to a post office, police station, court house, market place, etc. In our view, the IEC should designate the registration centres as the places for posting the lists for public scrutiny.
Once the list is published each person has the right to scrutinize it and serve a notice of objection to the appropriate Registering officer and pay the required fee.
Section 24 makes it a requirement for a revising court to be held in each administrative area in which notices of objections have been received. The magistrate appointed under this section is required to hold his or her revising court and give his or her decisions within 60 days from the date of lodging the objections in the revising court.
The revising court has power to insert or delete names. Once the revising court is complete with its hearing the Magistrate shall sign and put a date on the list and that list shall become the master register. Where there are no objections the Registering officer would sign the list and it would become the Master Register.
Foroyaa will publish free of charge the locations where the lists of voters are posted for public scrutiny and explain the procedure of filing objections. The public will have one more opportunity to scrutinize the list of voters and object to the entry.
AllAfrica – All the Time