The National Elections Commission (NEC) has mandated aspirants of the pending 2023 general and presidential elections to take down or remove their billboards, posters, banners, jingles, dramas, utterances and other forms of promotional paraphernalia from where they are situated or risk consequences during the candidate nomination process.
The NEC Chairperson, Cllr. Davidetta Browne-Lansanah, sounded the warning on Monday, May 8, 2023, and gave the politicians from now to May 15, 2023 to get rid of their pre-campaign materials.
The NEC disclosed that it started documenting violations of the campaign regulations as of May 5, 2023, and warned the aspirants involved in pre-campaigning to desist in order to avoid future embarrassment.
According to the election body, failure on the part of any aspirant to comply with this mandate will lead to consequences for the candidate nomination process, which commences on June 14 and ends on July 14, 2023.
In her update regarding the phase two of the biometric voter registration process on Monday, Browne Lansanah disclosed that the voter registration exercise in phase two counties of Bong, Grand Gedeh, Grand Kru, Lofa, Maryland, Nimba, River Gee, Rivercess and Sinoe commenced on April 21, 2023 as planned, and that the 1,015 registration centers in the nine counties have been opened for eligible Liberians to register.
She urged eligible Liberians in the phase two counties who are yet to register to do so before the end of the process on May 11, 2023. She was emphatic that there will be no extension of the process beyond the May 11 deadline; however, on the last two days, May 10—11, the centers will close at 7:00 p.m. instead of the regular 5:00 p.m. According to her, deduplication/adjudication of the voter registration records from the six counties in phase one is on-going at the NEC Data Center. She said the aim of this exercise is to remove all instances of multiple registration and other data cleansing processes, including the identification and removal of underage registrants. “The Commission assures Liberians that the BVR system possesses the capacity to detect these instances during the above-mentioned exercise. The Commission has opened its doors to all observers and stakeholders, including political party technicians that are duly accredited by the NEC, to observe the deduplication and adjudication process,” she stated.