All Set For Presidential Polls In Senegal Sunday

All Set For Presidential Polls In Senegal Sunday
February 26, 2000 


DAKAR, Senegal (PANA) - Senegal's interior minister, Gen. Lamine Cisse, has said everything has been put in place to ensure free and fair election in the country of nine million people on Sunday.

Addressing newsmen in Dakar on Friday, Cisse said the voters register, the subject of contention between the opposition and the government, has been examined and certified accurate and reliable.

The eight key parties standing for the presidential polls rounded off their three-week campaigns at midnight Friday.

The persistent controversy over the register between the Interior Ministry and the opposition parties grouped under the Front for Fair and Transparent Elections (FRTE), "is now over", Cisse said, stressing that "we reached an agreement on the reliability of the electoral register".

He said the acid test of the reliability of the register is that the serial numbers on the voters' cards correspond with entries in the register where each voter would sign after casting his or her ballot.

According to him, a quadripartite commission, composed of officials of the Interior ministry, FRTE, Civil Society and the National Election Observatory (ONEL), the body charged with monitoring and supervision of the polls, which reviewed the register concluded that there was only one electoral register and not two as the opposition had alleged.

Cisse said in the event of a run-off, voters will return to the polls fifteen days after the proclamation of the results. 

He said some 1.73 million potential voters have retrieved over 69 percent of their ballot in readiness for the polling which begins early morning Sunday countrywide.

The campaigns were punctuated with violent incidents in which houses were set ablaze. Some party supporters were injured in confrontations at political rallies especially in Saint-Louis, Thies and Rufisque. So far there have no report of death.

The Interior ministry made it clear that measures will be taken to safeguard lives and property before and after the polls.

The 1,619,799 voters on the voters' roll in Senegal and 106,192 registered abroad will choose between incumbent President Abdou Diouf who has ruled the country since 1981, and seven candidates of the opposition. 





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