G-Lers, The following, culled from the Daily Observer of today, gives the reaction of the IEC on allegations by the UDP in trying to justify their unjustifiable boycott of the National Assembly Elections. I will post the full text of the original press release giving details of where the "IMAGINARY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF VOTES" were moved by the IEC Have a good day, Gassa. IEC CHAIRMAN CLARIFIES SAYS UDP ALLEGATIONS ARE BASELESS Amidst on-going UDP accusations over the recent transfers and replacements of voters cards conducted by the Independent Electoral Commission which the party denounced as ‘seriously flawed’, the IEC Chairman, Gabriel J Roberts, has given a detailed reaction, clarifying the commission’s actions and dismissing the accusations which the UDP cited as reasons for its boycott of the coming parliamentary elections as unsustainable. According to Mr Roberts, the UDP accusations were “not only unfounded but lack sincerity and goodwill.” He said the practice for voters to be given opportunity to pay for and replace lost or mutilated voters cards and also to transfer their votes from one polling station to another within or out of the constituency in which they were previously registered was in complete compliance with section 35 of the Election Decree of 1996. The IEC chairman argued that the statement issued by the UDP that it had become aware of the peculiar and special exercise embarked upon by the IEC to allow massive transfers of voters from one constituency to another was aimed deliberately at misleading public opinion and to discolour an otherwise legal and beneficial exercise of the electoral process. The release from the chairman further outlined in tabular form all recent transfers and replacements made with a grand total of 1436 for transfers and 91 for replacements for public notification. Mr Roberts confirmed there were certainly no instances of voters suddenly shifting in their thousands from one constituency to another. “Out of 509,301 registered voters country-wide, only 1,436 voters opted to transfer their vote from one constituency to another and 91 lost cards were replaced,” he said. With regards to information from the IEC to political parties on their activities, Mr Roberts said no political party could claim that IEC had at any time withheld information from them. He said information to parties has been disseminated through invitations to press briefings and discussions as well as live phone in television and radio programmes. Mr Roberts also argued that the UDP had made formal report of irregularities in the transfer and replacement exercise to the IEC noting that in fact several UDP candidates have already been processed to contest the National Assembly elections by the time the press release announcing the boycott was issued. The IEC chairman went on to say that the development of the new register of voters used in the last Presidential election was funded by the British Government under the Department for International Development. He said the register which was issued on October 14 was about 99 per cent accurate with 5,000 mistakes in about 510,000 registered voters. He said it was unfair for the UDP to claim that the IEC equally rejected the participation of some seventy five thousand Gambians who lived and worked abroad asserting that the very idea of registering Gambian voters abroad came from the IEC. He said the exercise was deemed infeasible after much effort, expenses and research into the matter through Gambia’s foreign missions. He concluded by saying that though the IEC could not claim perfection, it had brought transformations and conducted elections that have been unprecedented in the history of The Gambia. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com <<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>> To view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] <<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>