By Lincoln G. Peters
The Election Coordinating Committee (ECC) is recommending that the full bench of the Supreme Court should cancel the October 10 Presidential and legislative elections results if the procedures and laws are not followed.
In a complementary greeting during the Liberian National Bar Association, Celebration of ” Law Day” on Friday, May 5, ECC chairperson Cllr. Oscar Bloh urged the highest court to cancel the election result if fraud and irregularities are noticed in the election results.
He appealed to justices not to be deterred by the financial implications involved in the cancellation of the election result while emphasizing that the right things should be done.
“I hereby challenge our judiciary, the foundation of our democracy, the peace that we seek rest in the hands of the Judiciary. The Judiciary will be faced with numerous petitions, as it was in 2017, where facts are clear, where sufficient evidence is shown, that electoral processes are not filed or followed. We challenge the court that nothing is wrong when the election results are thrown out.
“You should not be lost with the financial implications of the conduct of re-election if the procedures are not followed. We must protect our democracy. We must protect our electoral process as laid down in the laws” ECC chairperson Cllr. Bloh opined.
The Liberian National Bar Association on Friday, May 5th, 2023, joined the rest of the world in celebration of ” Law Day”. The program, which was held at the EJS Ministerial Complex brought together hundreds of lawyers including the Chief Justice Sie-A-Nyene G. Yuoh and members of the diplomatic corps.
The program was celebrated under the theme: Episode of electoral violence and prospects for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia.
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=1]
Giving precedent cases in Africa, Bloh named Ivory Coast, Malawi, and Kenya as African countries that recently canceled election results and went for re-election because they noticed that procedures and laws were not followed.
He also appealed to the Supreme Court to exercise authority when the election laws are not followed and do away with the opinion that calling for re-election is financially expensive.
Cllr. Bloh said already there are lapses in the timely disbursement of resources to the National Elections Commission and the move of the voter registration process from manual to the Biometric Voter Registration process (BVR).
He averred that citizens are complaining about the BVR process, material malfunctioning, and delays in the registration process due to limited knowledge of staff to operate the system among others, something he urged the government to address in order to improve the quality of the country’s democracy.
Cllr. Bloh mentioned the mass movement of voters around (voters’ trucking) as something which is unacceptable, describing it as an electoral offense-Section 10.1 of the New Election Law.
However, he explained that regrettably the NEC and the Ministry of Justice have not acted openly in addressing and responding to the situation.
He named other challenges ahead of the October 10 polls as the polarization of the media, particularly Community Radios owned, operated, and financed by politicians. This, he added, is a trigger for electoral violence because this is where inflammatory and hit speeches will be propagated across the country.
