Mai Ahmed Fatty has lashed out at the nation’s Independent Electoral Commission over its postponement of the voter’s registration cards. Saying his party will counter any element of attempted fraud ahead the 2021 presidential election due on 1st December.
He made this comments after the country electoral body postponed the earlier scheduled, 14 January, voters registration due to what IEC called ‘logistic challenges’ as a result lack of clearance from the Gambia Public Procurement Authority. Although, the office of IEC already assured that the delay will not affect the upcoming electoral cycle.
Speaking at a news conference held yesterday, the former Interior Minister, Honorable Fatty said: “we don’t know what those so-called logistical reasons are but they’re vague, very imprecise and a general excuse.”
“As a matter of urgency, I already started the process of engaging the IEC on what these logistical issues are. Beyond that, I have also started the process, a request of having an audience with the chair of the IEC in order to know in detail what the logistical challenges are and why we cannot have a date an approximate date,” he added.
According to Mai, a lot of things need to take place in this year’s election.
He said: “based on the election Bill we have at the moment, every 31st December, IEC should publish a list of people who lost their lives and are no more in the voting list and how many people they’ve deleted from the list, that’s their work”.
“We’re going to request from 2017 to date a list of people who have died and are no more in the lists because we don’t want to have dead people voting in 2021. This was how the former president use to cheat the elections and we are not going to accept that.
“Section 12 of the election Act mandated them to do that. We want a clean election this year. Any element of fraud, we’ll be very observant and we’re not going to accept it,” he said.
