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Liberia's NEC to Announce
By-Election Results Saturday, but CDC Already Claims Victory Courtesy: VOA November 14, 2009  Liberia's
National Elections Commission (NEC) said it will announce the final
results of a highly contested senatorial by-election this Saturday. The election had been billed as a referendum on the administration of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and a prelude to the 2011 general elections. But the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), the party of football legend George Weah called a news conference Thursday to say that its candidate Geraldine Doe-Sheriff had won the first round, raising the possibility of a run-off with ruling Unity Party candidate Clemenceau Urey. CDC Secretary General Eugene Nagbe said his party felt the need to announce its own results because the elections commission had been very slow and unconventional in announcing the official results. "Since the voting ended about few days ago, the Elections Commission has not announced the results yet. They have been announcing just a small fraction. So the CDC decided to take away the apprehension that has happened in Monrovia and inform our partisans and Liberians what the results actually are," he said. Nagbe said the CDC's own vote tally showed that with 80 percent of the polling places and 90 percent of the voting precincts around Montserrado County counted, CDC candidate Geraldine Doe-Sheriff was ahead of ruling party candidate Clemenceau Urey by a little over 7,000 votes. "This lead is unassailable because we haven't had the results from parts of Gbodee, parts of Millsburg. And even if they win all of the votes there, they cannot assail the lead that Geraldine Doe-Sheriff has," Nagbe said. He rejected suggestion that the CDC decision to announce its own results before the election commission could was unconventional and dangerous. "The way elections are run in Liberia, we have the tally sheet from each polling place. That tally sheet is signed by the National Elections Commission representative, by CDC polling officer, by the Unity Party representative, by the Liberty Party representative, and after the results are tallied by that polling station, it is posted for the public to see. What we did was to collate all of those results and let the public know," he said. Liberia's National Elections Commission (NEC) Chairman James Fromayan said only the commission has the constitutional authority to announce election results. "To begin with, there's nobody in this country clothed with the authority to give election results besides the elections commission. So anybody getting on the air to say they are giving results, they are just making fool of themselves," he said. Fromayan rejected CDC claim that the elections commission has been slow in announcing the final results. "This is not the first time we have conducted elections. Besides the 2005 elections, we have conducted seven by-elections, and we gave the results based on our own timeline," Fromayan said. The senatorial by-election was called to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Hannah Brent of George Weah's CDC party. According Liberia's election laws, a candidate must win 50 percent of the total vote plus one in order to be declared a clear winner. With 10 candidates competing, it seems more likely that there would be a run-off possibly between the ruling Unity Party candidate Clemenceau Urey and the CDC's Geraldine Doe-Sheriff. |
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