|
kobo
United Kingdom
7765 Posts |
 Posted - 04 Nov 2011 : 19:49:47
|
FOROYAA EDITORIAL;
The Beginning of primary elections in the Gambia Why were the IEC and GRTS absent?
"On Thursday 3rd November 2011, the GPDP, NADD, NRP and PDOIS United Front met at the Atlantic Hotel to select a flag bearer. Foroyaa observed that the IEC was not present to preside over the elections. Apparently, the United Front created its own rules for holding an election. The internal organisation of parties should conform to democratic principles. What could be more democratic than selecting a flag bearer in an alliance than by having elections?
It is also interesting that even though Foroyaa has reported on the meetings convened by the IEC to prevail on the Director General of the GRTS and the security to treat all political parties as equals the state media preferred to ignore the holding of the convention to select a flag bearer.
Despite the absence of the IEC the Organising Committee prepared its own rules to conduct the elections. The rules are as follows:
THE RULES AND PROCEDURES OF THE ELECTIONS
1. There shall be a person presiding over the elections who shall supervise the polls and announce the results.
2. GPDP, NRP and PDOIS shall be entitled to 70 delegates each and each candidate shall be entitled to a polling agent who would be seated where he/she could see the delegate entering the polling booth and throwing the waste left but shall not know how the person voted
3. Each delegate is entitled to a ballot paper and an envelope.
4 .The ballot paper shall contain the names and pictures of all the candidates
5. The delegate shall take the ballot paper to a room where he/she shall use a scissor to cut the picture of the person he or she wants to vote for in secret.
6. He/she shall put the photograph of the candidate in the envelope, tear the other photographs and dump them in a waste paper receptacle.
7 The person shall then place the envelope in a receptacle placed in front of all delegates.
8 The receptacle where the envelope is put shall be guarded by the person presiding.
9 After the last person in the list of delegates cast his/her vote the person presiding shall close the voting process and order the counting of the votes
10 The counting agents of each party shall have the right to ensure that the ballots are properly counted
11 At the end of the counting each counting agent shall endorse the results. The Person presiding shall then declare the results and announce the winner.
This is exactly how the elections proceeded and the delegates waited patiently to cast their voters while the observers waited patiently to hear the results. The contest was between Lawyer Assan Martin, Mr Hamat Bah and Mr Henry Gomez. 212 delegates cast their votes and Mr Hamat Bah had the 50 percent majority in the first round.The objective of the meeting convened by the UDP was to create a United Front that would endorse the UDP to lead. During the discussion it became apparent that such an objective could not be attained by seeking a mandate directly from leaders who had presidential aspirations. Hence a proposal was given to hold a convention to allow the people to decide. This has been done without the participation of the UDP. PDOIS declined to scramble for the flag bearership. NRP ended up with 119 votes while the combined votes of Lawyer Martin and Mr Henry Gomez amounted to 89 votes. It is a probability that if the UDP participated in the elections it could have emerged as winner today. This could have given rise to only one candidate for the opposition on the basis of popular decision by the people.
If Mr Hamat Bah is to stand under an NRP ticket albeit endorsed by a United Front and Mr Ousainou Darboe stands on a UDP ticket, also endorsed by another front one would expect a two way combat with President Jammeh.
Let us hope that now that the convention has narrowed down the Candidates in the camp of the opposition to two they could utilise their past relation to reduce the camp to one and thus make the opposition to speak with one voice."Foroyaa
|
Edited by - kobo on 04 Nov 2011 22:52:08 |
|
Topic Locked
