Elections commission says $17.5m needed to finance 2005 elections

Liberia's National Elections Commission has announced that voter registration for next year's presidential elections will start in April, but the independent body has warned that it will need US$17.5 million to organise the poll and not a cent has been forthcoming so far. "After the Christmas season, we will start voter and civic education in January….and then, in April, voter registration will start," Frances Johnson-Morris, the chairwoman of the electoral commission told reporters on Monday. But Johnson-Morris, a former high court judge and human rights activist, warned that her organisation desperately needed money to kick-start the process. Estimating the cost of organising the October 2005 elections at $17.5 million, she said: "It is very important that support to the commission be a matter of priority. Our concern is…getting the requisite support in a timely manner from our international donors and the National Transitional Government of Liberia." Johnson-Morris lamented that the Liberian government had not yet made available US$2.5 million which it had pledged to help fund the election. The National Elections Commission set the start date for voter registration shortly after Liberia's transitional parliament dropped its initial demand for a full-scale national census before presidential elections are held. The US government and Jacques Klein, the head of the large UN mission in Liberia, pressured the legislature into changing its mind last week. They complained publicly earlier this month that a census would make it impossible to hold the elections on schedule and any move to delay the vote would endanger vital inflows of foreign aid into the crippled country. The October 2005 elections are due to herald Liberia's return to constitutional government under the terms of an August 2003 peace agreement that ended 14 years of civil war. A UN disarmament programme was completed last month and the UN refugee agency UNHCR is now organising the return of more than 600,000 refugees and internally displaced people to their home villages. However, Johnson-Morris complained that Liberia's interim parliament, which is dominated by representatives of the country's three warring factions, had held up preparations for next year's elections by taking five months to approve the necessary legislation. "We have to catch up. There has been five months wasted over approving the elections reform bill," she said. Liberia's national football hero, George Weah, made waves earlier this month by announcing that he planned to stand as a presidential candidate. The 37-year-old former soccer star has until now remained aloof from politics, but his voice is likely to be increasingly heard in the West African country, not least because he has just set up his own radio and television station in Monrovia.