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IREDD, ECC brainstorm with political parties on the need for electoral reform

Report by Nyantee Togba_nyanteetogba@gmail.com

MONROVIA: The Institute for Research and Democratic Development in collaboration with the Elections Coordinating Committee on Monday held a brainstorming session with several Political Parties on the need for electoral reform in the country.

The event held under theme: Advocacy Engagement Meeting with Political Parties is being sponsored by the Liberia Accountability Voice Initiative.

IREED Executive Director Harold Aidoo giving the overview of the Project said the electoral reform project was intended to engage the views of political parties’ officials on some issues within the elections Laws of the Country.

Aidoo noted that IREED, following the electoral reform project will make several recommendations to the National Legislature Committees on Elections on the need to have electoral reform.

He stressed the need to urgently address the continuous reports of electoral fraud and other election related malpractices.

Electoral reform is a very important component of every political institution.  Since 2005, right after the civil conflict, we have had three major successful elections and dozens of by-elections and all of these elections; we have also documented several issues.

As we know, democracy itself is not an event; elections may be an event, one time, but democracy is a process.

Elections which is a component of this democratic process must be always calibrated, and the lessons on how we improve the conduct of elections, and need for marginalized voices participation, including the need for strengthening political institutions, and overall management and administration of the way elections are held.

Many of you were witnesses to some of the things we all documented from these recent elections. As civil society organizations, we believe we also have a role in terms of mudsling some critical marks on what are those issues we want the national legislature to amend and to improve in the next elections.

For his part, Opposition Liberty Party Secretary General Jacob Smith commended IRREDD and the ECC for the initiative.

Smith also stressed the need for a reform in the Final Registration listing by the National Elections Commission.

The elections commission itself is in violation of whatever the supreme court has ruled because if you recalled during the 2017 elections when Liberty Party and other political parties went to court; the supreme court ruled that the National elections commission is under mandate to sanitize that Final Registration Roll, FRR, up till now it has not been done.

Recently, the Montserrado County by-elections, we now begin to see graphic pictures of the fact that the FRR has not been sanitized.

So, I think the Supreme Court will have to act on that, they might have to even invite the elections commission, because the NEC has not done what the court mandated it to do.

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