Monrovia – Cllr. Frances Johnson Allison, former chairperson of the National Elections Commission (NEC), has told the NEC Hearing Officer, Cllr. Muana Ville, that it was criminal to alter the Final Voter Roll (FRR) because, according to her, it is illegal to amend that instrument.
Report by Henry Karmo henry[email protected]
Cllr. Allison stated that under her chairmanship there was nothing like addendum list as was done during the October 10, 2017 elections. She claimed that during her days at the NEC, the final list of eligible voters was published and not given to the political parties on USB pen drive.
According to the former NEC boss, going into an election without any voter final registration roll (FRR) was something strange to her because the FRR is the single most important document the Commission needs to conduct a successful lections.
“I was alarmed by the kinds of things I have heard. How could this have happened? We have an election and all these irregularities are being reported,” she said.
In response to a question about procurement from the lead defending council, Cllr. Musa Dean, as to what she meant when she said she co-organized the 2005 elections and whether or not the NEC did procurement as Co-organizer she said: “Donors did most of the procurement in consultation with members of the board of commissioners.”
She said: “This new process where people whose names were not on the FRR were allowed to write their names on a piece of paper to vote is a recipe for complete chaos. I have never heard of people writing names before voting.”
While on the witness stand, she also denied report attributed to her of calling for an interim government stating that people who are making the claims did not properly comprehend her comments.
Meanwhile, Mr. Jeff Blibo was also presented as an expert witness to give account of fraud of that marred the October 10 elections. Mr. Blibo is a computer engineer.
He Blibo told the hearings that after running analysis on a USB pen drive containing the Final Register Roll (FRR) presented to UP legal team by NEC, he discovered over two thousand names of duplicate IDs.
“I found out that one ID number could be used by multiple voters. I ran a listing of the files contains on the flash drive and with the limited time I was able to run over two thousand names of duplicate IDs. My analysis reveals that there are in fact separate databases and the FRR is distant and different from the online data. The flash drive that was given to me showed real discrepancies in the data and it can only confirm that once the flash was given to UP subsequently it was altered and the new flash drive received have different pieces of information,” he disclosed.
Blibo, who is the Co-chair for the Friends of Boakai Presidency, also claimed that it is inconceivable for a database of registered voters, to be badly flaw and claimed that the FRR should be the only database all other systems should feed from.
He further stated that the database should contain unique, different ID numbers for all registered voters and not duplicates or something different on the online platform used to confirm voters IDs.
“When you look at the FRR that was given the UP is different from the ones in the online system. For example, I put is an ID that should be for a unique voter and the online system feeds out two names if this were a bank, the consequences could be disastrous.”
Initially when he took the stand, he admitted to being a supporter of the candidacy of Joseph Nyumah Boakai of the Unity Party but said his testimony at the NEC hearing was professional and separate from his tie with candidate Boakai.