New Electoral Commission expected early next year |22 September 2017

A restructured Electoral Commission (EC) with a chief executive, deputy chief executive and chairperson has been proposed and is expected to replace the existing one as from early next year.

This reform, which is expected to cost a little less than R2 million, was one of the issues discussed at a meeting of the Electoral Reform Forum yesterday morning at National House.

The forum is made up of representatives of political parties together with members of the Electoral Commission (EC) as well as representatives of two local election observer groups -- Citizens Democracy Watch Seychelles (CDWS) and Association for Rights Information & Democracy (Arid).

Other issues discussed yesterday were Ile Perseverance as an electoral district, voters’ census and the way forward.

The discussions which lasted the whole morning saw a lot of disagreement on previously discussed and agreed matters.

Speaking at the end of the meeting Roger Mancienne, the LDS (Linyon Demokratik Seselwa) chairman said they are frustrated because for a long time the forum has been discussing the same issues over and over again. It is to be expected, he said, that not all political parties would agree on how things should be done but the EC should work on all the different ideas and views that have come out from previous meetings, put them together to come up with some concrete propositions to help it move forward on these issues in order to make tangible progress.

With regard to the restructuring of the EC, Mr Mancienne said the forum had previously agreed that there should be a chairman and a chief executive separately with clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

Mr Mancienne said this would allow for the chairman to focus on policy matters while the chief executive would focus on the day to day operations of the EC.

With regard to the voters’ register and the recent voters’ census, Mr Mancienne stressed that the census would update the register by establishing the voters living in Seychelles and those featuring on the register but “we really need to tread carefully and act cautiously before deciding to really remove people from the register”.

While there are calls to have a more credible voters’ register, Mr Mancienne said this does not mean removing people from the register but simply make people understand that there are voters living in Seychelles as well as overseas and establish clearly the number on both lists.

He said the EC can step up its effort to do what it can to ensure a more credible voters’ register noting that for instance the EC can also verify the voters’ register against the Civil Status list of deceased people to ensure the latter are struck off the register. As for those who die overseas and are not recorded here, as well as allegations that people abroad can vote twice, Mr Mancienne said political parties can verify these with the EC’s permission.

How the EC addresses the issue of new electoral areas as soon as possible and without all the contention as was the case with Ile Perseverance before the last elections was also a point that raised a lot of debate.
Mr Mancienne said there is a need to amend the Constitution to provide for the creation of an electoral area at any time in order to ease the voting process for people.

As for the representative of Parti Lepep, Simon Gill, he said it is time to stop talking and going round and round on the same issues already discussed in previous meetings and therefore wasting time.

He is of the view that the EC should act faster and expressed the hope the EC would act because time is running out.

With regard to the new structure for the EC, Mr Gill said his party would also want to see the creation of a position for a deputy chief executive in order to have a clearly defined structure for a new EC with an orderly and organised work procedure where everyone knows his or her responsibility to avoid confusion especially during election times.

As to matters relating to a credible voters’ register, Mr Gill said this has always been an issue with opposition parties at all elections but we all agreed that a voters’ census would be a step towards achieving that even though now questions are being raised regarding the effectiveness of the census.

Mr Gill says Parti Lepep agrees to amendment of the Constitution to provide for the creation of a new electoral area but it remains to be defined at which point the new district becomes an electoral area with its own voters’ register.

Hendrick Gappy, the EC’s chairman, said in a transparent manner the commission has listened to views from concerned stakeholders on these important issues and now it will go through all the inputs and in line with national and international best practices as well as norms and standards, decide on the best way to move forward.

He said the EC now has a broader range of views and ideas to help it to move forward.

Responding to criticisms that the EC is too slow in the way it is moving on the issues on hand, Mr Gappy pointed out that electoral reforms which started in 2013 took quite some time because there are lots of documents to go through and it is no easy work as it requires lots of planning but the EC has prioritised and has been working in the background. The restructuring of the EC has been one of its priorities as well as the recent voters’ census which it is still working on and conducting call backs to some households.

Meanwhile Mr Gappy said the EC has prepared summaries of all the discussions it has conducted with the stakeholders which would be made accessible to all of them.

“As the EC we need clear guidelines as to what they need and we will meet to decide on the way forward on the voters’ census,” Mr Gappy said.

He stressed that the EC would explore all the views and ideas received and consider them in its decision-making process.