Monrovia – The four opposition collaborating political parties have alarmed over what they see as serious discrepancies and inconsistences in the voter roll presented them by the National Elections Commission (NEC).
The parties are saying that they see “errors”, which if not corrected, according to them, can derail the credibility of the pending July 29th by-elections in Montserrado County.
According to Mr. Martin Kolleh, coordinator of both campaign teams of Mr. Abraham Darius Dillon and Ms. Telia Urey, they hired a technical team comprising IT specialists and it was them who allegedly uncovered, what they have described as “huge contradictions” in the number of registered voters in Montserrado. According to them, the number of registered voters NEC presently has on its website is hugely different from the copy NEC presented to them in hard copy as the final voters roll.
Kolleh told journalists at a news conference Saturday, July 27, that their technical team had carried out four types of analyses, including comparing the numbers of voters on the 2017 voters roll, which was given by NEC and ruled upon by the Supreme Court. Kolleh said they have in their possession that particular voters roll; they are alleging that it is different from the one recently given by NEC.
“The first stage of our analyses, we were focused on comparing the numbers, second was to match photos on the voters roll of the 2017 against the most recent, the third was to do analysis on the voters ID to know if some IDs are being repeated and lastly was to identify names on the voters roll without pictures,” Kolleh further explained.
Kolleh further stated that of the 17 districts in Montserrado, their technical team took as case study of districts 1, 15 and 16. During their analysis, it was uncovered that District #1 had an additional 1,056 registered voters and District #15 had 812, while their technicians noticed that in District 16 there were alleged duplications of precincts.
“The team took districts 1, 15, and 16 as case study. It will interest you to know what we found out. Our team uncovered that in district #1 Montserrado County, There is an addition of 1,056 votes, while 15 has 812, while in District #16 there are existent precincts existing in another precincts. These findings have caught the attention of the collaborating political parties and we have communicated with the NEC via phon. We also did an official communication to the NEC.”
According to him, during an interaction with NEC Saturday morning, the Commission allegedly admitted that the numbers posted on their website are far higher than the numbers given to political parties.
District #15 Bloody Campaign Rally
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the All Liberian Party (ALP), Mr. Theodore Momo, has accused candidate Abu Kamara of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) of hiring thugs to disrupt the campaign rally of Ms. Telia Urey, the four collaborating political parties’ candidate who is contesting for the vacant seat in district #15, Montserrado County.
According to Chairman Momo, Kamara and the “CDC thugs” allegedly launched a sustained attack on partisans and supporters of Ms Urey. He furthered that this led to seven of Ms. Urey’s supporters being severely injured. Momo accused the police of being present but did nothing to prevent the situation from escalating.
“The police have always aided and abated the act of the CDCians. While our partisans were under the attack, the LNP barricaded our supporters and stopped them from even fleeing the attacks from the stone throwing CDCians.
“This shows that this government is not serious about the democratization of Liberia. Our democracy is under attack. We want partners to take notes of what this governing party is doing. We cannot continue to be silent, there will come a time when we will no longer exercise restrains.”
“They is coming a time when we will demonstrate clearly that Liberia is for all and that no one person has monopoly over violence in this country. When you push a man to the walls he can only bounce back. Weah needs to keep his people under control; this country is for everybody.”