National Assembly members for Banjul North and Latrikunda Sabiji have called for the introduction of paper balloting system which they said is more transparent for the election.
Their call came as the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that The Gambia will stick to the marble voting system until 2026.
“The paper ballot is easy and transparent. We had it at the selection of the presidential candidate of the coalition, as the presidential candidate was elected through the process,” Banjul North MP Honorable Ousman Sillah told lawmakers at the parliament.
According to him “some (people) say it is going to be a challenge for people to use ballot tokens, imagine talking of 17 political parties and is going to be around 53 constituencies as of now and it will increase. I believe that we should go for ballot boxes and paper this is not about illiterate issue is for a change in our ballot system.”
MP for Latrikunda Sabiji, Honorable Saikou Marong, said: “Paper ballot is cheaper and less expensive. We should stop sending bad message to Gambians that paper ballot is not conducive.”
According to him, Gambians should understand that The Gambia is not an island and so the world keeps on evolving and there is a need to change the system. And stop the idea that the IEC as an “independent body will find it very difficult to allocate ballot boxes to all political parties.”
He said some candidates did not have colours for their ballot boxes and if you look at the colours you hardly differentiate them.
Let’s imagine the amount of ballot money we used for ballot boxes that money can be used to sensitized the nation about the paper ballot, he said.
Member of Parliament for Saba Sanjali also supports to adopt the paper voting system since the procedure is easy and fair.
