r2kgambia@gmail.com - Abuja - Amsterdam - Banjul - Dakar - Johannesburg - Washington
Mr. Alieu Momar N’jie
Chairperson,
Independent Electoral Commission
Election House,
KSMD, The Gambia
17 October, 2016
Dear
Commissioner Alieu Momar Njie:
Request for information
The Right 2 Know
Coalition-Gambia extends its greetings and compliments to you and the IEC. We write
in the true spirit of partnership, with the aim of assisting your Commission
better deploy its mandate at this critical time, as The Gambia heads for
elections on 1st December, 2016. The R2K
Coalition has sought to obtain information on how these upcoming polls are
being conducted by your good offices, but has not been successful. The IEC website is inaccessible and has remained
so for well over a year. The Commission’s URL: http://www.iec.gm/
is not working and has a message which
reads: “IEC.GM is Under Construction. Come Back Soon.”
As the lead
agency tasked with conducting elections in The Gambia, the IEC’s awesome
responsibility of upholding and adhering to its legal mandate and principles of
integrity and fair play, cannot be overstated.
We realize the responsibility entrusted to it by the constitution and
the various legislative frameworks that legalizes its existence. It is in this regard that the R2K Coalition-Gambia
wishes to enquire from the IEC several critical aspects of the management of
the elections process as we inch closer to the December Presidential elections in
2016 and the National Assembly elections in 2017.
The R2K
Coalition Gambia is therefore asking the IEC to provide answers to the
following questions:
The Gambia has
not officially released the 2013 decennial national census. The last census
that was officially released was in 2003.
The unexplained delay in publishing the results of what was a
well-funded, planned and executed 2013 census enumeration, makes it impossible
to conduct any verification exercises against statistics presented by any state
or non-state actor on the country’s population, socio-economic and age brackets
to mention but a few social segments of the national make up. It is now on
record that the voter list has ballooned from 796,929 in 2011 to 886,578 in
2016- an increase of almost 90,000 voters- in a country of 1.8 million.
1
1. What population data is the IEC using in its registration exercise?
2. What other data is informing the voter register?
The Electoral
Amendment Act 2015, which was presented
as a Bill on June 30, 2015, prior to passage of the Elections Amendment on July
7, 2015; and Gazetted as Act No: 6 of
2015, has been used in the past to urge
political parties to register.
A deadline of
March 31st 2016 was given by the then IEC Chairperson, Mr. Carayol, for all
political parties to register. Notwithstanding
the IEC’s use of the Amendment Act, it has, as recently as 6 September 2016,
made official pronouncements on the conducting of the polls, in which the
Elections Amendment Act was never featured or cited. Instead the 1996 and subsequent provisions of
the constitution and the elections Act were cited.
3
.
Which electoral Act is IEC using to conduct the 2016 Presidential
and 2017 National Assembly elections?
From 14 January
to 12 March 2016, voter supplementary registration by the IEC, since the
passage of the Amendment Act 2015 was undertaken, the data was as follows: Banjul: 649, KMC: 5,001, Brikama
13,039, Kerewan 6,245, Mansakonko 2,732, Janjanbureh 9,639 and Basse 7242
respectively. Janjanbureh, which is the
least populated in all the districts listed, had the highest number of registered
voters. It also had the highest number
of registered voters, more than Banjul, Mansakonko and KMC combined.
4. What informed the results of the IEC’s supplementary voter
registration of 14 January to 12 March 2016?
On or about
January 27th 2016, the previous Chairman of the Independent
Electoral Commission (IEC), Alhaji Mustapha Carayol, confirmed that the
development of a biometric voters' registration process will cost the
government 33 million dalasi (US$833,000) at the time of calculation.
5. Who/which company was contracted to supply the BVR technology and
was there an open tender process?
6.
Has the IEC finalized the procurement of the BVR?
7.
What was the eventual cost and payment made for the BVR?
On or about 11
February 2015, the previous Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission
(IEC), Alhaji Mustapha Carayol, explained to the PAC in the National Assembly that
IEC spent D40 million in 2011, and said if they are to combine the two
elections (Presidential and National Assembly polls) it could go up to 120 million
dalasis or more.
8.
What was the budget for 2016/2017 elections?
9.
How much of that budget has been met?
10.
Who are the donors?
11.
How much did each door pledge?
12.
How much did each donor honour and when?
13.
How much is Gambia government financing?
14.
Has IEC or its Commissioners received any gifts from President Yaya
Jammeh and what are those gift?
15.Has IEC or its commissioners received any gifts from
non-governmental organisations/development partners?
6.
Why is the IEC Website not accessible?
17.
When will the IEC website be accessible?
We now wish to
lean on the principles of the ECOWAS
Protocol A/SP1/12/01 on Democracy and Good Governance Supplementary to the
Protocol relating to the Mechanism For Conflict Prevention, Management,
Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security’s Section II- Elections, Article 3: The bodies responsible for organising the
elections shall be independent or neutral and shall have the confidence of all
the political actors. Where necessary, appropriate national consultations shall
be organised to determine the nature and the structure of the bodies;
Article 5: The voters’ lists shall be
prepared in a transparent and reliable manner, with the collaboration of the
political parties and voters who may have access to them whenever the need
arises; Article 6: The preparation
and conduct of elections and the announcement of results shall be done in a
transparent manner; and Article 8: Member
States shall use the services of civil society organisations involved in
electoral matters to educate and enlighten the public on the need for peaceful
elections devoid of all acts of violence;
The African Charter on Democracy Elections and
Governance, which came into force in February 2012,
which Gambia has not ratified but signed on 29 January, 2008, which states in Article
17, under Democratic Elections, that:
“State parties must establish and strengthen
independent and impartial electoral commissions responsible for the management
of elections”; and
The African Union Convention on Preventing and
Combating Corruption, which Gambia ratified on 30
April 2009, which is in force. Under Art
9:
“Each State Party shall adopt such legislative and
other measures to give effect to the right of access to any information that is
required to assist in the fight against corruption and related offences.”
These principles
are the corner stone of the R2K-Gambia team’s campaign, which is why we demand
access to information that legally must be made available to all citizens as a
right. We hope that the IEC will also
embrace these principles and ensure that Gambians, especially in these
elections, are afforded the opportunity to be equipped with the right
information, at the right time to inform their decisions. It is also imperative that citizens are afforded
the opportunity to cross reference and verify the election process.
The R2K
Coalition is therefore looking forward to receiving feedback on the request for
information from the IEC on matters that we deem fundamental in any democracy,
and absolutely critical to the delivery of free, fair, and transparent elections.
Sincerely,
R2K Coalition-
Gambia
*********************
Who:
R2K Gambia is a
made up of a grouping of individuals with professional backgrounds ranging from
geology, demographics, economics, international relations and law,
communications, and academia. But all
members are human rights activists. We
are located in US, UK, West and Southern Africa. We are a non-partisan entity
that focuses on rule of law and democracy, good governance, human rights and
the principles of access to information.
Disclosure: I am a member of the R2K Gambia
