Monrovia – A candidate vying for the Vice Presidency for Operations post within the Liberia Basketball Association (LBA) leadership elections scheduled for Saturday, November 30, has warned that the elections can’t go on without a level field.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with FrontPageAfrica, Edwin S. Fahnbulleh, a running mate to Abraham Samukai, stated that the processes leading to the election are full of a lot of discrepancies, including the voter roll and others.
“One of the discrepancies is that teams’ presidents, who registered their teams are eligible to go and vote but the voters’ roll in my possession from the LBA is ridiculous. They have here team presidents who are available to vote but the LBA thought it wise that the vice presidents should vote in place of the presidents even when their presidents are in the country. This is totally against our constitution,” he emphasized.
According to Fahnbulleh, a vice president or a secretary-general of a team should only be allowed to vote only if the president of that team writes the LBA and states that his/her VP or secretary-general should vote on his/her behalf. He further stated that the LBA should not tell a team’s president, who should vote for him/her.
“There are three Executive Committee members’ names on the voter roll. They are not eligible to vote; one of the three has been in the United States of America for the past two years and her name is Romell Watson, the second person is Fred Ted, who the LBA’s Grievance Chair but he is not the Grievance Chair because throughout the year Mr. Yanqueh Borsay has been the Grievance Chair,” he said.
Fahnbulleh told this newspaper that they have written the elections commission headed by Cllr. V. M. Karneh expressing their concerns on the voter roll.
According to him, one of the key issues that is supposed to be carried out before the leadership election is congress during which the outgoing leadership would give accounts of the association’s finances and others.
He charged that Rufus Anderson put the congress on the same day of the election; adding: “This is absolutely against the association’s constitution.
“As I speak to you, we have not yet received any document concerning congress. So how can we have a congress? That is not possible. We are also having problem with the venue of the elections, the information about the venue is Palm Spring Hotel and Crown Hotel. So our question to Anderson administration is, are the elections going to take place between those two venues? This is the same tactic they did last year so they got to be definite of the venue of the elections. The Elections Committee has been informed on the situation.
Fahnbulleh vowed to stop the elections process through the court if LBA forces the election to go on.
On the other hand, the Secretary-General of the LBA had confirmed that the November 30, 2019, scheduled date for the elections still stands and that the appointed commissioners for the elections are fully in charge and are carrying on the process.
