By Solo,

'INACTIVE PARTIES BEWARE, IEC HAMMERING'
 
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has called for an Inter-Party meeting of all political parties in the Gambia to discuss what they called the way forward and other matters but only 4 parties appeared. An insider to the meeting who prefers anonymity gave this reporter a copy of the summary of the IEC BUDGET proposal which showed an astronomical figure of D152, 522,835 dalasis or $5, 866,252.88 Dollars.

This budget if approved would go towards the expenses of the electoral office’s activities for the election year 2010/2011, 2012 and 2013. The activities include Review of Constituencies, Registration of voters, Presidential election, National Assembly elections, Local Gov’t elections,
Continuous voter education, Institutional and Capacity Building, Inter-Party
Advisory Committee and Office Equipment and Logistics.

Asked what the way forward is about, the insider said the IEC Chairman has expressed feelings that many parties are not active and they want to do something about that. He also said the IEC wants to decentralize the Inter party to all the administrative areas and chair the meetings. He said this is departing from the earlier practice when chairmanship was rotating between the political parties.

Asked what the IEC would do to parties that are seen to be inactive, the informant said maybe they are thinking of deregistering those parties that remain inactive or they may want to push parties to become active.
When I asked whether he knows any of the inactive parties the IEC may be talking about, he said the four parties that attended the IEC meeting are the APRC, PDOIS, NADD and UDP. He said may be the other parties like the NRP, GPDP,GMC, NCP, and others would be seen as inactive. He said the IEC is saying they cannot even find the Secretariat or the contact persons of some of these parties and asked what the essence of such parties when they cannot even be reached.

When further asked why the election body is bothered by the inactivity of these parties, the informant said the IEC is of the view that such parties simply inflates their budget when it comes to activities like elections when such parties do not even take part in elections which is a waste of resources for them. When I asked the informant what else comes out of the meeting, he said well someone asked about what comes out of the validation workshop which made many recommendations to amend the ELECTIONS DECREE, he said the IEC Chairman said it has been sent to the Attorney General’s Chambers but not yet taken before the National Assembly for approval; that the IEC is a toothless bulldog when it comes to legal matters.

So as far as the reforms are concerned, all the recommendations and efforts made by stakeholders regarding reforms to better the operations of the IEC have gone to naught and the election body will continue to be a partisan body operating under the guise of the president without any tenure of office..