Multiple parties confuse voters

River Gee County Senator Comany B. Wesseh says the number of political parties in Liberia most time confuse voters, adding that voters find difficulties at the polls due to so many parties contesting elections. He told the NewDawn Tuesday, 19 September in Monrovia there are so many political parties here because the election law is not being implemented to the fullest. There are some 20 presidential candidates from different political parties here for the October elections.

But Sen. Wesseh blames the proliferation of political parties on the Elections Law not being implemented to the fullest. He believes that if the Election Law is implemented to the fullest, Liberians will not have the kind of problems they face now.

The River Gee Sen. notes that the National Elections Commission (NEC) has requirement set that must be met by an institution to be qualified as a political party. For a party to be qualified by the NEC, he says the Election Law calls for certain number of registered members to be in that party, and that the party must have certain amount of money in its account before participating in any election.

But he observes that most of the listings that were published by political parties here in various newspaper to showcase their membership are not readable, thus giving the public hard time to read due to very small font size.

He says most time when one tries to look at the listing that is published, it is observed that one person is doing the writing, thus supposing that those responsible for the list must have obtained people’s names from somewhere.

He notes that there is no check up on those names as presented, and also raises concern about the way people now leave from one party to another without any formal notice from their current party.

By Bridgett Milton–Edited by Winston W. Parley