By Emmanuel Mondaye
The Liberia National Police (LNP) supervised Sunday’s community leadership election in Jallah Town, a slum community in Monrovia.
Police took charge of the venue of the election after some disgruntled residents from rival parties threw stones at poll workers.
Armed police officers prevented supporters of rival candidates from entering the polling center in a bid to enable electoral staff conduct free, fair, and transparent election.
Unidentified residents threw stones at police officers, reporters, party observers and election officers, but no injury was reported.
The situation cased delay in counting ballots after the poll, compelling the police to further push back those who had encircled the election premises.
While the tallying of ballot papers was in progress at about 10:00 PM, unidentified persons cut-off power source to the polling premises thereby, halting the entire process. But poll workers hurriedly turned on their personal phone light and continued with the counting process.
Election commission chairman, Lordwin Newland, told reporters that he and his team had no special interest in any of the candidates, but to ensure Jallah Town community has new corps of leaders thru peaceful and transparent elections.
Five candidates, including Alfred T. Bombo, Patrick Karmu, Peter Wo, Lawrence Yonmah and BlamaSarmor contested for the chairmanship, while Ernest Wilson, Garbo Francis, Prince J. Saywah and Wilfred Robert vied for the post of youth leader, respectively.
At the end of the entire process, Mr. Patrick Karmu was elected chairman with a total of 264 votes against his rivals who had 205, 171, 141, and 255 votes respectively.
Candidate Garbo Francis won the post community youth chairman receiving over 300 votes against fellow challengers with 246, 176 and 299 votes respectively.
The election was witnessed and supervised by representatives from the National Elections Commission (NEC) and local observers.
Jallah Town Community Chairman-elect, Garbo Francis
–Editing by Jonathan Browne
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