Monrovia – The National Elections Commission has scheduled the runoff presidential election for December 26.
Report by Henry Karmo, [email protected]
The two parties – Unity Party and Congress for Democratic Change – have been given the green light to begin campaign activities.
The disclosure was made by the Chairman of the Commission, Cllr. Jerome Korkoya, Tuesday during a press conference.
At the press conference the NEC chairman also promised to fully implement the ruling of the supreme court and disclosed that the technical team of ECOWAS that provided assistance in the FRR cleaning were expected to returned in Liberia on Tuesday 12 of December
We call on the two political parties in the runoff to go about their campaign in a peaceful and responsible manner.
The runoff election which was originally scheduled for November 7, 2017 was delayed by the Supreme Court pending a final ruling in a lawsuit filed against the Elections Commission by the opposition Liberty Party which came third in the first round and the ruling Unity Party which is to go for runoff with opposition Coalition for Democratic Change led by soccer legend, George Manneh Weah.
Contrary to the reports of national and international observer missions, both the Liberty and Unity Party claimed the October 10 election was marred by fraud and irregularities and fell short of the minimum requirements to be deemed as free, fair and transparent.
The Liberty Party called for a rerun of the October 10 elections.
However, in a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court last Thursday, the Justices said though the political parties established through the pieces of evidence and witnesses presented during the hearing at the Elections Commission, those evidence could only prove fraud at few polling places.
Such evidence in their view could not be set as a basis to annul the results of the October 10 elections.
The Supreme Court, however, amongst other things, asked the National Elections Commission to clean up the Final Register Roll (FRR) before proceeding with the runoff elections.