By E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor in Monrovia
Liberians are poised to go to the ballot box again to cast their votes in the much anticipated run-off. The Unity Party and the opposition Coalition for Democratic Change will face off in the run-off. But as the two parties conclude their campaigns soon, the National Elections Commission NEC) has taken steps to purge the Final Registration Roll (FRR) with the removal of hundreds of duplicate names.
The NEC set December 26th as the D-Day for the final determination of who becomes Liberia’s next president after President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Although UP took flight to the Supreme Court on a Bill of Information requesting the High Court to place a stay order on the December 26th polls, the party is campaigning for votes; so is the CDC with Senators Weah and Jewel Howard Taylor winning a huge endorsement from Jeremiah Sulonteh, who was running mate of Alexander Cummings of ANC.
Speaking at a news conference in Monrovia Wednesday, December 20, 2017 at the NEC’s headquarters, NEC Chair Jerome George Korkoya said, “… the new Final Registration Roll is now 2,183,268…the former Final Registration Roll (pre-cleanup) 2,183,629, removal from de-duplication process 274, deletion from records of shared voter Identification Cards 87, total deduction from FRR 361, new FRR 2,183,361 totaling 2,183,268 voters are qualified for the run-off.”
Commenting on the voters with multiple identification cards, Korkoya noted that the Commission recalls that 998 voters were flagged as those sharing multiple identification cards.
“Further analysis of these voters show that 158 of the 998 were received without having to issue new voter identification cards,” Korkoya noted, “but 87 of them had to be deleted from the roll because their Optical Map Reader forms were scanned twice- which resulted in the multiplicity of the voter identification cards were created for 420 records; so that all the 840 records now have distinct voter identification card.”
It can be recalled the Supreme Court ruled that the Final Registration Roll be cleanup before the conduct of the run-off election.
It an effort of ensuring that the mandate is implemented, on Friday December 15, 2017, technical Team of the National Elections Commission and the sub-regional body – ECOWAS – invited the political parties to abreast them with the roadmap on the full implementation of the Supreme Court’s mandate, ordering the NEC to carry out a full clean-up of the Final Registration Roll (FRR).
The occasion, which saw many parties in attendance including the two parties in the runoff, CDC and UP, was graced by national and international observers and the Press.
