Elections to be postponed

Guinea-Bissau's legislative election, scheduled for 20 April, could be postponed. Media sources quoted the Ministry of Internal Administration as saying on Wednesday that the voters' list would be updated from 17 April to 6 May to ensure a transparent electoral process. For weeks, the government had defied the country's electoral law, as well as pressure from the opposition and the international community, for it to update the list of eligible voters prior to the polls, already postponed once this year. They were originally to have been held in February. There had already been speculation that the polls might be postponed since the government had been saying for weeks now that it did not have the financial and technical means to organise the election, made necessary by the dissolution of parliament by President Kumba Iala in November 2002.