The Commissioner for the Southern Region in the National Electoral Commission (NEC) Commissioner Augusta Bockarie has assured stakeholders while delimiting boundaries they don’t interfere with the threshold.
Commissioner Bockarie said while they are delimiting the different boundaries there they don’t only consider population but they have to think about “threshold, connectivity, communication and nearness.”
Commissioner Augusta Bockarie maintained that the Boundary Delimitation process “is very important,” adding that the consultation brings in all the stakeholders together for a national work, and “needs the participation of the stakeholders especially the political parties. If we are able to get them together, they in turn will be able to take the messages to their people”. She stated that the exercise “is a process and we need to consult with them on every step of the way to get their perception and opinion about the process.”
On the issue about the shifting of a particular Constituency, from or Bo Town to Kakua, the Southern Region Commissioner said “this happens because of distance and as long as it is within the threshold we can go look in to it.”
She added that the delimitation is for the 2018 elections, and because of the census data and the request made by Parliament to add twenty more seats, there will be increase or decrease in certain area and sometimes a shift will occur.
Honourable Swahilo Koroma of the opposition SLPP said he is “happy for the consultative conference but that NEC should have listened to the SLPP as they had raised concerns about the census result which they termed as ‘flawed’.”
However he said from discussions with the NEC team they [NEC] disclosed that they are working on a schedule and that they don’t want elections to go beyond 2018 which he said he is “pleased with.”
Honourable Koroma maintained that concerns that some people are raising is the use of the population to delimit boundaries as this can “affect the development of rural areas.” He said “NEC should try and engage government, Parliament and other stakeholders to look into these constraints even though it is not part of their mandate, but these issues borders around elections so NEC has to look into it.”
By Bawoh Jenkins
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