Leader of the Opposition’s Letter on OAS Observers Unanswered

A request for O.A.S. observers during the re-registration process has been ignored.  That request was made by Opposition Leader John Briceño to Prime Minister Dean Barrow in a letter dated the thirtieth of May.  Briceño wrote to the PM saying that for the process to be transparent, it would be best to invite an O.A.S. Observer Mission. However, Briceño’s letter has gone unanswered as explained by the party’s Chairman, Henry Charles Usher.

Henry Charles Usher, Chairman, P.U.P.

Henry Charles Usher Jr.

“The other issue about re-registration is this issue of the OAS coming in as observers. The Leader of the Opposition wrote the Prime Minister at the end of May, requesting that like what happened in 1997 we have the OAS coming and observing the re-registration exercise. The Prime Minister has not even responded to the Leader of the Opposition on this issue and of course we see the exercise start yesterday and the OAS are not present to be observers. We feel that the issues that are happening on the ground could be avoided if we have the proper observers in place and that of course would be the OAS. We understand that the major issue yesterday was the delays, how long it was taking for person to get re-registered especially in the villages. From our reports we are getting that sometimes thirty minutes to forty five minutes per register voter. Which means for those villages that they will only going to be in for one or two days it will be quite impossible for them to register all the voters in those villages. So we hope that that some more efficiency can be brought into the process for these different villages to carry out the re-registration exercise. We also been informed in the Freetown division specifically was allowed to put two scrutineers in that office. As you know they have not picked their standard bearers as yet so apparently each standard bearer feels like they can put their own scrutineers. This is not part of the process and we call on the Chief Elections Officer and the Elections and Boundaries Department to do something about this issue.”