Electoral Register issue: the CENIT (Electoral Commission) stringent, though undecided

Fokontany officers may forget it once for all; the Electoral Commission is definitely not remotely interested into increasing their contribution to the completion of the electoral process as a whole. The Fokontany chiefs’ protests were rather met with contempt by the Electoral Commission. Beatrice Atallah went as far as denouncing incompetence and poor motivation which must have entailed serious consequences on national scale. That problems spoiled October 25th’s voting operation was widely known, so is the scapegoat’s identities by now. The Electoral Commission even formally dubbed Fokontany chiefs as “reactionaries”.

This can now be held for granted: when addressing the Electoral Register related issue, the Electoral Commission is nowhere near to let itself be browbeaten without reaction. Where is the need to that, since there are still Fokontany chiefs to put the blame on? “Fokontany chiefs wrongly understood and poorly executed instructions”. As a consequence, including voters who failed to appear in the Electoral Register up to the first round is off the point. The Electoral Commission has spoken. So be it, but here is the catch; on the first round’s day, thousands of voters made the move to Fokontany offices to make up for the partial failure of the main voter registration drive, in order to legally appear in time for the second round.

Even the Electoral Commission caught the point and consequently decided to review its stand and exercise leniency. Voters would be let in, they, who were registered by the census, yet who failed to appear in the Electoral Register. As for the others, the citizens deprived on October 25th of the civic right to vote, they are invited to address the Court and expect a suitable piece of paper. Easier said than done though, considering all the strains systematically met over a single operation in Court. The Electoral Commission gently put districts’ courts at anybody’s disposal.

In spite of the ruling power’s politically motivated decision, every voter will not appear in the Electoral Register in time for the presidential election’s second round. “They only have their own selves to blame” would comment Fatma Samoura, the United Nation’s coordination agent, who has not been changing her mind about the potential reprocessing of the Register since October 25th. As a matter of fact, the Electoral Register drafted up to October 9th will not be reprocessed. Fatma Samoura won the day. And the pending additional list will neither massively tip the voter turnout scales nor make up for the past organizational errors.

The case of those voters possessing an electoral card though failing to appear in the Electoral Register is besides being played down by the Electoral Commission. Mrs Atallah stated about this that they must simply have joined the wrong polling station. It would not be a surprise if the concerned victims were illiterate voters unable to decipher the figures clearly indicating the right polling station. Yet, all of these cases were recorded countrywide in big cities. But what does it matter? The Electoral Commission is certainly not bound to lose its time recovering these lost sheep, and risking doubles in its accounts again.

Some politicians argued that 30% of all voters would have been off the Electoral Register during the presidential Election’s first round. The Electoral Commission finally issues the formal figure of less than 10%. The additional list would eventually not have more than 800 000 names uploaded. The removal of doubles will only be completed at the regional level, for lack of time. The presidential candidates who survived the first round will obviously be eager to get the largest part of these 800 000 new votes, yet, once again, having so many new names up on the Electoral Register’s additional list, remains excessively optimistic.