Mr. Demba Ali Jawo, former minister of Information has said that the l low turnout of voters for local government elections is yet another justification for why the IEC and the government should seriously consider holding all three elections, presidential, legislative, and local government, at the same time.
Noting, That would not only address the problem of the low turn-out, but it will also certainly be more cost-effective. Rather than spending millions of Dalasi every few months to recruit election officials and all the other paraphernalia that goes with organizing elections, there would be quite a lot of savings if the three elections are held simultaneously.
“Looking at the local government election results in the various administrative areas, the ruling National People’s Party (NPP) has demonstrated its dominance up-country, particularly in the Upper River Region (URR) and Central River Region (CRR), thus maintaining its characteristic of being a “Bolongkono” party. The NPP, therefore, deserves to be commended for performing so well in their first local government elections. It has, however, performed quite severely in the Kanifing Municipality (KM) and Brikama Area Council (BAC), which no doubt must have been a big disappointment for President Adama Barrow and his politburo because those two areas were the most valuable prizes that he would have loved to capture. There is no doubt that if he were given the choice of conceding the rest of the country to the opposition and winning only those two areas, he would have jumped for it without hesitation. ”
“According to the IEC, the turn-out was only 243,899 out of the 962 157 registered voters, just about 25 percent. Of course, the IEC would insist that their hands were tied by the law to do anything to avoid the elections being held in Ramadan, but there is no doubt that there are provisions in the law that could have been utilized to vary the time, even by a week or two”
