The Supreme Court of Liberia has trashed the Collaborating Political Parties’ petition requesting the high court to probe the Constitutionality of the National Elections Commission (NEC) just-ended biometric voter registration process.
It can be recalled that the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP) in early March petitioned the Supreme Court to probe the Constitutionality of the National Elections Commission’s on-going biometric voter registration without demarcating Constitutional electoral constituencies.
Giving the Court’s opinion on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, Chief Justice Sie-Nyene G. Yuoh said the court found no reason to disturb the on-going registration exercise. The Chief Justice noted that the National Elections Commission (NEC) is not in violation of the Constitutional provision regarding Articles 80 [D] and [E].
Article 80[D] of the Constitution states, “Each constituency shall have an approximately equal population of 20,000, or such number of citizens as the Legislature shall prescribe in keeping with population growth and movements as revealed by a national census; provided that the total number of electoral constituencies in the Republic shall not exceed one hundred.”
Section E also state that “immediately following a national census and before the next election the Elections Commission shall reapportion the constituencies based on the new population figures so that every constituency shall have as close to the same population as possible; provided, however, that a constituency must be solely within a county”.
The high court’s chief judge further said that while the NEC has a duty under Article 80 [E] to reapportion constituencies, the said duty is not self-executing.
The Supreme Court maintained that the duty to reapportion constituencies can only be executed based upon the precondition that a national census report is concluded and submitted to the Legislature.