Court rulings may affect elections date, officials say

Liberia's first elections since the end of its civil war have been thrown into doubt by rulings from the Supreme Court, UN and election officials said on Wednesday. The country's highest court upheld appeals on Tuesday from two presidential candidates, who had been barred in mid-August from standing in the polls because the National Elections Commission said there were problems with their registrations. Alan Doss, the head of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), acknowledged there might be some knock-on effect on the ballot, due to be held in just under two weeks on 11 October. "I need to get the written findings of the judgments," he told a press conference on Wednesday. "They do have implications on the timetable for elections. We are aware of that and are now meeting with our ICGL partners to discuss the possible implications." The ICGL, or International Contact Group on Liberia, includes the United States, Great Britain, the European Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Liberia's Supreme Court decided that two independent presidential candidates -- Marcus Jones and Cornelius Hunter -- along with one independent candidate bidding for a seat in the lower house, had not been given enough time to correct the problems in their registration paperwork. It ordered that they be given seven days to correct the discrepancies, and when that was done to the electoral commission's satisfaction, new ballot papers bearing their names should be printed for the whole country. Just hours before the court ruling, the National Elections Commission had triumphantly announced that all the ballot papers were in place throughout the heavily-forested country, huge swathes of which are remote and difficult to reach particularly in the current rainy season. "The elections date is irreversible," Frances Johnson-Morris, the head of the National Elections Commission, had declared. Immediately after the court handed down its decision, the mood changed to one of uncertainty. "The implication of the (Supreme Court) decision is obviously that we are not sure if we can implement the decision and still keep the election date of 11 October," Johnson-Morris said. On Wednesday, electoral officials were locked in talks about how to proceed. They are expected to make a statement on Thursday. "Accepting the Supreme Court rulings now means that the ... holding of elections on October 11 may be changed, because we have to go back to the printers to re-do all of the ballots," one senior official at the NEC told IRIN on condition of anonymity. However, the elections official did not rule out the possibility of what he called a "behind-the-scene compromise with the three independents". Jones, one of the candidates who had his appeal upheld and a lawyer by trade, called on electoral officials to obey the court's ruling and said he had no problem coming into the race late. "I will have to travel to the interior to discuss the court's decision with my supporters," he told reporters on Wednesday. There are currently 22 approved candidates bidding to be crowned president in next month's polls, including former footballing legend-turned-politician George Weah and former World Bank economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Elections for the Senate and House of Representatives are scheduled to be held on the same day and another Supreme Court ruling, regarding the ballot to choose senators, might also throw a spanner in the timing works, officials said. Last week, the court ruled in favour of a petition filed by the Coalition for the Transformation of Liberia, who had argued that since two senators are to be elected from each of Liberia's 15 counties, voters should be allowed to choose two candidates on their ballot paper instead of one. NEC chief Johnson-Morris said the decision posed "a major challenge" to the commission because educating voters, a high proportion of whom are illiterate, about changes to the marking of ballot papers would be "an arduous task" in just two weeks. "If it becomes impossible... to implement the decision, we can take a recourse to the mediators," she told reporters on Tuesday.