Students Denied Voter Cards



The Independent (Banjul)

June 15, 2001
Posted to the web June 15, 2001

Tunko M. Sabally
Banjul, the Gambia

Students at Armitage Senior Secondary School in Janjangbureh alleged that
they have been denied voters cards.

According to some of the students who recently spoke to our reporter, the
chief of Janjangbureh and some elders turned them away when they went to
register. They said that the chief told them that any person who is not a
native of Jangjangbureh will not register there, even though they told him
that the IEC rules and regulations did not say so. They said that when they
put it to him that some non-natives of Jangjangbureh among them security
officers and other civil servants were being registered there, the chief
denied this.

Some female students also alleged that even though they had national
identity cards and birth certificates they were not allowed to register.

In one incident this reporter saw three people from the constituency of Sami
being turned away because they were seen as non-natives of Janjangbureh.

One student told our reporter that he overheard some elders telling the
chief not to allow Armitage students to register there because they are not
going to vote for Yahya Jammeh due to the April 10 and 11 incidents. He said
that since the population of Armitage is about 500 students and it would be
undemocratic to exclude them from the voting process. "We will not allow
what happened in Palm Beach in America in the last American elections to
happen here," he told our reporter.

When our reporter asked the chief about the student allegations he said that
he does not talk to reporters.

Earlier a registration officer for the IEC had said that it does not matter
where a person is born provided he or she has a birth certificate or
identity card and has attained the required age.

Another student summed up the determination of the students to acquire
voters' cards when he said that they would seek permission and go home to
get registered.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------