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Nigerian democracy tucked in "carry-all' ballot-bags
Nigerian democracy tucked in "carry-all' ballot-bags
Monday April 23, 2007
For the first time in history, Nigerians voting in the just-ended presidential and governorship polls, dropped their ballots into see-through "carry-all" plastic bags, an innovation that electoral officials said was aimed at checking malpractices.
The light fragile-looking zipped-up polythene bags are neither heat nor fire resistant, unlike the padlocked steel-coated glass ballot boxes used in past elections.
Trimmed in green, with two floppy green carrying handles, Nigeria's new bag-cum-ballot-boxes are identical to the large zip-up transparent bags used to store new quilts and blankets on supermarket shelves.
"When Nigeria decided to put voters' ballot papers, the key to its democracy, inside an easy-to-open fragile plastic bag in the name of a ballot box, what do you expect?", said a Lagos-based lawyer who asked not to be identified.
"The kind of democracy you get at the end of the day derives from the process that gave birth to it," he said.
But the country's election commission, INEC, said the new boxes were aimed at shoring up the democratic process.
"We changed to the plastic bags because politicians already have specimens of the old boxes we used and we felt that they could easily fabricate them to commit electoral malpractices," an INEC official told AFP.
"This is an innovation. But INEC will use this box only for these rounds of elections, and their run-offs if there are any. After that, we shall discard these boxes and devise new ones," said the official, who requested anonymity.
Saturday's presidential and National Assembly poll, as well as state governorship and parliamentary elections held a week earlier, were marred by violence and electoral malpractices, including rigging and ballot-snatching.
A re-run of elections where voting had to be suspended due to errors in ballot papers or complaints of malpractice would be held in many parts of the country in the course of this week, INEC said.
The race to step into the shoes of outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo is scheduled to mark Nigeria's first civilian-to-civilian transition since the nation gained independence from Britain in 1960.
AFP
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