OAS says campaigners breach 100 yard line

Frank Almaguer

While observers noted that there aren’t any laws governing political financing, they also took notice that the rule defining the hundred yard boundary between supporters and the polling stations was not being respected.  In all instances there were dozens of campaigners gathered near the entrance to the various polling stations where they heckled their opponents and solicited votes.

Frank Almaguer

“A third area of interest to us and it will no doubt generate recommendations has to do with electioneering in and around the polling places.  The mission will recommend that the government and political parties take positive steps towards reducing the role and influence of party activists at voting centers into a more uniformed enforcement of the one hundred yard boundary around the polling station and through the enactment of stronger mechanisms to protect the ability of voters to vote, to go to the voting place without the outside pressure that clearly is generated when the voter has to literally walk through the gauntlet of political activists of all persuasions. The OAS mission observed that political parties were actively engaged with the electorate, orienting voters and educating them about voting procedures.  Agents from the two major parties maintained a presence at all of the polling stations observed by the mission.  Nevertheless, the active role played by party activists, who congregated in significant numbers outside of many of the voting centers produced less than a conducive environment for voting process.  The electoral propaganda that was observed in the vicinity of the polling station and the prevalence of t-shirts bearing the candidates’ names and symbols could be construed as electioneering.”