A meeting for Monitors for Referendum Day

With forty more days to go until Referendum Day on April tenth, today the Elections and Boundaries Department met with organizations who are represented in that National Assembly. The department is trying to tie up the logistics inside the three hundred and sixty counting stations.  The Chief Elections Officer says she wants to ensure transparency and accountability in the referendum process. News Five’s Hipolito Novelo reports.

Hipolito Novelo, Reporting

Representatives from several entities, namely both political parties, private sector, unions, churches and NGOs, participated in a one day information session facilitated by the Elections and Boundaries Department. The department invited organizations who are interested in monitoring the ICJ referendum on April tenth.

Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer

Josephine Tamai

“We want to ensure that we have transparency and accountability in this process. You all will know that this referendum is not an election where you have candidates. The law speaks to the appointment of candidates, of agents of candidates when there is an election. In this case we want to ensure that we persons who are there to monitor the entire process from the counting and also the polling.”

According to Chief Elections Officer, Josephine Tamai, the organizations were invited with the intention to share with them the rules and regulations that will be implemented during the process in terms of monitoring.

Josephine Tamai

“The monitors will be allowed in the polling stations when they go in the polling stations they will observe that the box is empty, prior to the opening of the polls, look behind those booths  so make sure that there is nothing behind those booths to give any voter any indication how you want them to vote. You want them to see how voters are voting not in terms of yes and no but when they are coming in and voting quite smoothly. And that those who are eligible to vote and they are voting on referendum day.”

Tamai says that today’s session was well attended.

Josephine Tamai

“It is similar when it comes to general elections when you have the counting clerks, we have the referendum monitors. What we informed the political parties is that for this national issue is not that they are operating as political parties. They are referendum monitors similar to all the others. So these are allowed to be in the polling stations as well.”

So far there are a total of three-hundred and forty-four polling stations across the country for referendum day. Hipolito Novelo, News Five.