Voter registration ends with disappointing turnout among IDPs

More than one million Liberians have registered to vote in presidential elections in October which are designed to seal the West African nation's return to peace. But officials said on Tuesday that the number of displaced people who had signed up for a ballot paper was disappointingly low. David Singh, a spokesman for the electoral division of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), said preliminary results from the four-week voter registration campaign showed that 1.2 million people had put their names down to take part in the 11 October poll. However there was little appetite for the upcoming elections among internally displaced people (IDP) still living in camps almost two years after Liberia's brutal civil war ended. They accounted for just five percent of those registering for a vote by the time the exercise finished last Friday. "We are going to be honest. It was not as high as we would have liked," Singh told IRIN. "We did a lot of outreach and sensitisation but... these IDPs represent the people that were the most traumatised by the war and maybe there's a reluctance to take part," the UN official said. When an August 2003 peace deal brought Liberia's 14-year civil war to a close, there were more than 300,000 people displaced within the country. Some of those still living in the Wilson Corner Camp on the outskirts of Monrovia told IRIN that the 1997 elections, held during a brief lull in Liberia's long-running civil war, had left them with a nasty taste in their mouths. "In 1997... we had lots of candidates coming to us saying that when they were elected, they would help to change our lives," recalled Solomon Holmes. "But when we voted them into office, they forgot about us and now we are seeing the same sorts of people making the same promises, so there is no need to even register." "We don't care to vote" Fellow camp resident Miatta Sirleaf aired similar grievances. "When we were suffering, running from bullets, none of them even assisted us. They didn't spend a day with us in the camp to see how we were doing. They do not care for us and we do not care to vote," she said. Of those IDPs that have registered to vote, seventy percent have chosen to return to their county of origin to cast their ballot, while the remainder will vote either in the camps or nearby, Singh of UNMIL said.

Turnout has been low among IDPs

Despite the low turnout among IDPs and court appeals by two human rights activists for Liberians to be given more time to put their names on the electoral register, the National Elections Commission (NEC) is adamant the registration period is over. "The NEC underscores that there will be no extension of the exercise beyond 21 May," the commission's chairwomen Frances Johnson-Morris told IRIN late on Monday. The commission is now only allowing refugees returning from neighbouring West African countries, to put their names on the electoral roll. They have until 4 June to register as long as they have a valid repatriation form. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United States backed the electoral commission's stance. "There is no compelling reason to extend the period for voter registration. Any changes in the voter registration period or other election rules at this stage could jeopardise the October election," the US embassy in Monrovia said in a statement. When registration for the 2005 elections kicked off at the end of April, Johnson-Morris said she expected 1.5 million people to sign up to vote. Missed target? Definitive voter registration figures will probably not be available for another two weeks, but the preliminary number of 1.2 million falls a good deal short of that target. UNMIL's Singh shrugged off the discrepancy. "That figure (1.5 million) was not written in stone. It was an operational estimate that we used," he said. "Nobody really knew what the voter population was in this country." The last census in Liberia was carried out in 1984 and counted 2.5 million people. Since then surveys failed to get off the ground because of the 1989-2003 conflict and no-one knows the population of the West African nation or how it is distributed. For planning purposes aid agencies generally use an estimate of around three million. Singh said that women accounted for 48 percent of the 1.2 million confirmed registered voters and that almost two-thirds of the total were aged between 18 and 38. Geographically, the highest concentration of registered voters (38 percent) was in Montserrado County which includes the capital Monrovia. In some of the more remote counties of this heavily-forested country, electoral officials admitted that the poor state of the roads and a lack of vehicles made the registration slow and difficult. However, the International Republican Institute, a private non-profit organisation based in Washington DC that sent a team into Liberia to monitor the pre-election preparations, said it judged the registration process to be credible. "The mission team found the registration process has been greatly improved since the 1997 election. Improvements have been made in the number of Liberians registered and the transparency and openness of the process," the group said in a statement published the day before registration closed. "(But) the team did see the need for increased civic education between now and the October elections," it added.