Village Council Elections are Officially Underway

Village council elections are officially underway across the country and both major political parties have organized slates to contest the available seats in their respective communities. It’s an exercise that will continue for the next seven to eight weeks until every village has elected a council to represent its concerns within the apparatus of local government. The Elections and Boundaries Department is also at the helm of the logistical preparations to ensure that the process runs smoothly. Earlier today, News Five spoke with Chief Elections Officer Josephine Tamai.

Josephine Tamai

Josephine Tamai, Chief Elections Officer

“The process has commenced. This year, for the first time, nominations are being held on a separate day than election day. So the first set of nominations took place last week Sunday which was the eighth of May. In those areas now, this week they go into the village council elections. So we’re having actual elections with the exception of eight villages and that’s because on nomination day for last week, in those specific villages, the persons who got nominated they were uncontested. If you notice on our website, even in the newspapers this weekend, we have published those because those persons now are duly elected chairpersons and members for those specific villages. So the process has commenced. This week now, we start with the actual elections and nominations in other villages. If you look at the schedule that we have published, you will notice that we go into elections throughout the entire period, it’s over a seven to eight-week period if we include the nominations whereby villages will be having elections and nominations in other villages during a specific week. So now, when it comes to having the elections, like I said, those persons or those villages for whom nominations have already been held they will go into elections this week. This week, we’re also having nominations for villages who will go into elections the following week. So that is how it actually goes.”