By Mustapha Jarju
Gambia Participate, a youth-led civil society that engages in fiscal transparency and government accountability, has made recommendations to the Independent Electoral Commission to address the issues of the voters who were turn away from the polling stations because their names were not found on the voters’ roll.
Speaking at a press conference, Marr Nyang said the GP report said the election body must as a matter of concern to update the voters registered to avoid such occurrences before the voting date, the IEC should publish polling station level of results on Election Day to their websites to increase the level of transparency of the votes.
“At 53% of polling stations party agents for Essa Mbye Faal signed the official counting form, at 95% of polling stations, a GDC polling agent signed the official counting form at 99% of polling stations party agent for NPP signed the official counting form, at 21% of polling stations NUP party agent signed the official counting form, in 79% party agent for PDOIS signed the official counting form, and in 99 percent of the polling stations observed the UDP party agents signed the official counting form respectively,” he said.
“At 52% of polling stations party agent of Essa Mbye Faal were given a copy of the official result, at 93% of the polling stations a GDC polling agent was given a copy of the official results, at 96% of the polling stations observed an NPP party agent were given a copy of the official result, at 21% of polling stations NUP party agent was given a copy of the official result, in 76% PDOIS party agents were given a copy of the final result, at 97% of the polling stations observed UDP party agents were given a copy of the official result respectively”. And at 98% of polling stations observed across the country the official results for the presidential election were posted in a visible area for everyone to see.
“The independent observer body GP also recommended that the IEC should re-open voter registration for persons who have turn off age to participate in the legislative elections. “In the spirit of electoral transparency, the IEC should also ensure timeline release of polling stations release to observer groups and other stakeholder to enable early planning,” he added.
“Misconduct at polling stations reported by the Gambia Participate indicated the incident of intimidation and harassments of voter or polling officials were recorded at 6% and 7% of polling station respectively, in 6% of polling units women were affected by intimidation and harassment of violence and this includes women that are voters, polling officials, security, party agents or observers,” he said.
GP also observed that in 3% party agents attempted to influence voters and people were seeing voters to vote for a particular party in 5% of polling stations while the report of this irregularities came from all the regions which is mostly received from the Central River Region south at 8% and Upper River Region at 7% GP stated.
