Dear Editor,
As GECOM continues its march towards the conduct of the 2025 elections, I feel the compulsion or more so the obligation, as a constitutional officer responsible to the electorate and the citizenry at large, to report on my view about GECOM`s preparedness. As I have stated publicly before, GECOM is implementing a list of activities (a work plan) that will facilitate the conduct of an election on September 1, 2025.
However, the extent to which GECOM has consciously omitted to put certain safeguards in place, and refused to ensure that all of the electorate can exercise their franchise is the extent to which GECOM will not be conducting a free, fair and transparent election.
For those trolls and naysayers, the absence of impenetrable registration and identification systems, and the refusal to facilitate the deletion of the names of some of the reported dead and unreported overseas dead, in addition to the conscious denial of the incarcerated and some party poll-day workers of the opportunity to vote, places GECOM in the position of consciously not observing constitutional provisions, to wit the right of citizens to vote, and the best practices in relation to the conduct of elections. As a consequent, there can be no verification and or certification of a free, fair and transparent elections.
GECOM`s conscious non-compliance with constitutional provisions in its conduct of elections and the erection of administrative barriers is now legend. However, GECOM would wish to portray, to the public and the international community, its sincerity and commitment to conduct free, fair and transparent elections. That deception has however been exposed generally and by some specific acts or omissions, which have already been brought to the public attention and restated above. It is however useful to further expose the ongoing chicanery.
GECOM took a decision that voters will not be prohibited from carrying their phones into the Polling Booth (the compartment where the actual marking of the ballot (voting) will occur. However, when this matter was raised by the international partners, GECOM`s Administration undertook to review the matter.
That review resulted in the Administration, without reference to the Commission, issuing a Press Statement on the unlawfulness of disclosure of information relating to the casting of a vote, in its attempt to communicate to the public and the international community that it is pre-empting attempts by voters to take pictures of their ballots for evidential purposes. However, the said Administration, in cahoots with the winner-take-all majority of the Commission (the chairperson and the government appointed commissioners) stoutly maintained their original position to allow phones into the voting compartments.
In doing so, they proffered spurious reasons such as the security of a lodged phone and disenfranchisement arising from a voter`s refusal to lodge his or her phone, among other untenable reasons.
They are unprepared to take responsibility and actions for ensuring their erroneously articulated secrecy of the vote, while with open eyes facilitating coercive voting, to wit the buying of votes. This is symptomatic of the manner of the conduct of GECOM in the run up to the 2025 elections.
Yours truly,
Vincent Alexander
GECOM Commissioner
