International observers who witnessed the October 10, 2023 general and presidential elections have hailed the Liberian people for their nationalistic attitude to vote massively without any incident of violence during the Tuesday elections.
The heads of these international observation mission who monitored the election including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union (EU), the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA), and others delivering their respective preliminary results from the just ended elections in Liberia, poured praises on the Liberian people for their maturity.
For the ECOWAS Observation Mission to Liberia, the head of the Mission, Professor Attahiru Jega in the Preliminary Declaration read said, “On election day, the Mission deployed 120 observers, grouped into 54 teams across the country. The observers visited a total of 576 polling stations spread across both urban (25%) and rural areas (48%) in 13 out of the 15 counties of the country, and reported the following:
Opening of the polls
Generally, all of the 60 polling stations visited by our team observers at the start of the polls opened within 30 minutes of the official opening of 08:00 whereas 57 (representing 95%) of polling stations opened at 08:00 am, only three polling stations (representing 5%) opened after 08:00 am, but before 09:00am. No significant delays were observed at the start of the polls. The atmosphere at polling stations was generally peaceful with security agents present in 91.67% of the polling station visited, the ECOWAS Mission also observed security patrols across voting precincts.
See Detail Report Of ECOWAS Mission Preliminary Declaration
For its part, the European Union Elections Observation Mission (EOM) to Liberia in its preliminary declaration read by head of ECOM and member of the European Parliament, Andreas Schieder said, “On election day, EU observers visited 417 polling stations across all counties of Liberia, except for Grand Kru. Election day was generally calm and peaceful, although isolated cases of incidents in and around voting precincts were reported by observers. There were mostly the result of long queues of voters, especially in the morning hours.
He observed that Liberian voters demonstrated commitment to the democratic process by participating in great numbers in the 10 October elections, noting that the technical preparations and running of the Election Day were well administered.
He disclosed that 100 EU election observers reported from over 417 polling places both in rural and urban areas in 14 out of Liberia’s 15 political sub-divisions, indicating that polling day was calm and well conducted nationwide by the National Elections Commission (NEC) and staff of the Commission nationwide.
“Observation of Election Day showed Liberians’ democratic commitment and was positively assessed by the EOM observers,” he added, indicating that voters had to face long waiting time for voting.
He graded the conduct of political campaigns for the elections as being largely peaceful and vibrant, indicating that journalists were free to cover all sides of the campaigns.
See Detail Report Of ECOM Preliminary Declaration
Delivering the preliminary declaration on the just ended October 10, 2023 election in Liberia, EISA International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) headed by His Excellency Dr. Nevers Mumba, former Vice President of the Republic of Zambia, and deputized by Mr. Baidessou Soukolgue said, “In January 2023, EISA launched a long term Election Observation Mission Activity to support the integrity of the 2023 Liberia Presidential and Legislative elections by assessing and reporting on all aspects of the electoral process. 12 Long-Term and Medium-Term Observers (LTOs) from April 2023 observed the preliminary stages of the elections. They were later joined by 20 short-Term Observers (STOs) who arrived on 5th of October 2023.
Detail Report Of IECOM Preliminary Declaration will be posted later
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