By Frank Sainworla, Jr fsainworla@yahoo.com
The National Elections Commission (NEC) Board of Commissioners in Liberia on Friday upheld the Hearing Officer’s ruling dismissing the opposition Liberty Party (LP) and the ruling Unity Party (UP) election fraud claims saying that they lack the necessary evidence.
But the two parties have taken exception vowing to appeal to the country’s Supreme Court.
In its final ruling read by Commissioner Davidetta Browne-Lasannah, one of the seven members of NEC, the Board of Commissioner stated count-by-count the claims of massive fraud and irregularities raised by the parties in their complaints against the conduct of the October 10, 2017 first round of presidential and legislative elections.
Among other things, they complained about the un-tidiness of the national voter roll and failure to publish the Final Registration Roll (FRR), ballot stuffing, no serial numbers on ballot paper, etc. In addition, the parties complained that ballot boxes in some areas had to be taken on people’s head in canoes without security and that NEC allegedly violated Liberia’s elections law and the constitutional provisions guaranteeing free, fair, transparent and credible elections.
The parties named several polling places where they alleged irregularities occurred and prayed that the commission and nullify the results of the elections and order a rerun.
But NEC said in all their counts, both parties were not able to establish fraud which must be established by truth, as some of the lapses which they said such as initial problems with queue controlling and other administrative problems were corrected as polling continued, which did not constitute fraud.
“The Hearing Officer’s final ruling is hereby confirmed and affirmed,” the NEC Board of Commissioners ruled.
Quoting Section 3.7 of the new amended election law, NEC said everything it did concerning the voter roll and balloting was in line with the “controlling law, dismissing claims by the complainants that the ballots printed for the October 10 elections did not have serial numbers. The serial numbers were on the ballot stubs and not the ballot itself, in line with standard practice, the ruling explained.
On allegations that the voter roll was not published, the NEC ruling said the Final Registration roll was published on the NEC website and displayed at the Commission’s magisterial offices around the country, “NEC has FRR and there is a confusion between the provisional and final voter roll…NEC maintains only one voter roll,” the ruling said in accordance with Section 3.6 of the Liberia’s new election law.
However, lawyers of LP led by former Justice Minister Cllr. Benedict Sannoh and the UP led by Cllr. Varney Sherman took exception to the ruling and said they will take advantage of the law to appeal against it at the highest court in the land.
Legal experts say the law provides that such an appeal can be done within seven days.
UP’s lead Counsel Cllr. Sannoh told www.newspublictrust.com after NEC’s ruling that he could not say exactly how long they will take to submit their brief for the appeal to the high court. But when asked if in the face of NEC’s dismissal of their complaint whether NEC could go ahead with preparations for the runoff presidential elections, Sannoh said no that cannot be done until the appeal is heard.
NEC’s Board of Commissioners said in their final ruling on Friday that before the election dispute case reached the Supreme Court, both the ruling UP and the main opposition CDC had agreed to go to the then scheduled November 7 runoff. Both parties are said to have asked NEC to allow two of their observers (poll watchers) to be at each polling center across the country.
Immediately after the ruling was announced, a placard was raised into the air by a young man in the audience which read: “The Supreme Court will protect Liberia democracy…”
It was because of this unresolved case at NEC that the Supreme Court recently put a halt to the scheduled November 7 runoff presidential election that should have taken place between the two frontrunners. In the results from the first round of voting—CDC’s George Weah got nearly 38.4% and incumbent Vice President Joseph Boakai of the UP had 28.8%.