The country electoral body, National Elections Commission has finally submitted the Final Registration Roll (FRR) for all 15 counties, following as ordered by Justice in Chambers, Jamesetta Wolokollie.
The justice in Chambers late last week gave the NEC an ultimatum to make the documents available for public inspection at each magisterial office during normal business hours and to provide electoral copies to stakeholders in a secure format by Saturday, September 30, at 4 p.m.
However, local media reports in Liberia suggests that the NEC presented the FRR on Friday, September 29, at 9:45 p.m., after its request to postpone the presentation of Montserrado County’s FRR on Monday October 1, 2023 was rejected.
The country’s new election law of 2014 calls for the presentation of final Voter’s roll (FRR) to parties and same be displayed at various magisterial offices in the country.
However, the National Elections Commission on the other hand argues that the law does not state specific day to present FRR.
Liberia’s former ruling party, the Unity Party last week took the NEC to the supreme Court of Liberia seeking interpresentation of law.
‘Plan Votes manipulations’
There are reports of alleged attempt of vote rigging by the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) who has also vowed to win the pending presidential election first round.
A presidential candidate in Liberia needs to accrue at least 50% plus one vote of the total votes cast to be declare winner of an election.
The Unity Party has already expressed concerns about an “increased” in the number of registered voters in Montserrado, Margibi, Grand Bassa, and Grand Kru Counties, following the NEC’s de-duplication process.
The deduplication process was meant to weed out people who double registered during the voter’s registration period and it was expected that the total number of voter’s list were to be reduced after the process.
About 2,471,617 total registered voters were earlier announced by the NEC but the number recently jump to almost 3,000,000 registrants after the deduplication process.
Amos Tweh informed, Unity Party Secretary-General told a late night show recently that instead of the FRR decreasing or remaining the same in these counties, it has seen a significant increase, which they attribute to potential ‘electoral fraud’.
Election tension in Lofa
Tension has been mounting between the former ruling Unity Party of Joseph Boakai in the county of Lofa over show of strength in that area. At least two persons were reportedly killed following a clash between the two in the city of Foya, Lofa County.
Both parties have since blamed each other for the violent activity as police carry out full scale investigation in what led to the violence.
