By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
The Gambia’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has concluded the voters’ registration exercise with a total of 987,484 voters cards issued, meanwhile, the High Court ruled against the Banjul Mayor’s issuance of Attestation Forms. Last week IEC’s weekly memo highlighted that 856,719 voters cards were issued over the first 5 weeks meaning that only 130,765 voters cards were issued over the last 9 days.
The voters’ registration process started on the 29th of May 2021 and concluded on 11th July 2021. It can be seen that each week the total number of registered voters declined significantly. If 1 million registered voters were to be registered in 44 days, at least 22,727 voters’ cards should be issued every day. With this benchmark, it can be seen that the IEC achieved this registration rate for the first 4 weeks in a row.
From the chart shown below, it can be seen that Brikama has 36.5% (360,825) of all the registered voters making it a significant constituency in the upcoming December 2021 Presidential race. Out of the remaining 6 Administrative Areas, Kanifing comes in second place with 19% (187,632) of all the registered voters. The gap between first and second is a whopping 173,193 Registered Voters which in itself is greater than any of the remaining 5 Administrative Areas.
On the other end of the spectrum is Banjul with only 2.2% (21,445) of all registered voters followed by the second lowest, Mansakonko with only 5.9% (57,832) of all registered voters. Even though Banjul has the lowest number of registered voters that number may still be cut down further if all registered voters with an Attestation Form signed by the Banjul Mayor are cancelled.
Just today news of Justice V.P. Mahoney’s ruling that Attestation Forms signed by the Banjul Mayor “contravenes section 12 of the Elections Act” began making the rounds. One lawyer explained that even though the High Court declared the Attestations issued by the Banjul Mayor as illegal “the court has no jurisdiction to cancel the already registered voters’ cards through the attestations issued by the said Mayor as that can only be done by the Revising Courts”.
The last two charts depict that almost 57% of all registered voters are female compared to only 43% of their male counterparts. The difference between male and female voters is most pronounced in Brikama where over 45 thousand more female voters have registered compared to male voters. To put this into context Banjul has less than half of that number of registered voters with less than 22 thousand registered voters.