In the National Assembly |06 August 2020

Members approve Elections Amendment Bill

The National Assembly yesterday resumed its debate on the Elections Amendment Bill (2020) which seeks to bring around 17 main amendments to the legislation before approving.

Twenty members voted in favour of the merits and principle of the Bill after which the National Assembly entered committee stage, a stage wherein a bill can be further amended.

The Elections Amendment Bill (2020) is being considered on the cusp of a general election in which both the presidential and legislative elections will be contested.

Propositions for changes in the Elections Act include defining and clarifying key terms such as ‘rejected ballot paper’, ‘spoilt ballot paper’, ‘valid votes cast’ and so forth, and reducing the number of supporters that a candidate needs to support his/her nomination to 50 for a presidential candidate and 10 for a legislative candidate.

Types of ballots that are to be used during elections and security measures to ensure fair elections are also among the amended provisions in the Bill.

A new concept for Seychellois voters is the introduction of alphabetical voting with the proposition to divide an electoral zone’s registry in three; hence there will be three queues at a polling station.

Noline Sophola, member of the National Assembly (MNA) for the inner islands, was the first to take the floor and stressed on the need for the Electoral Commission to relook at how it undertakes the registration of first time voters from Praslin and La Digue.

“The bill proposes to reduce the number of supporters needed to 50 for presidential and 10 for legislative and I feel that this lowers the credibility and validity of the election process,” Honourable Sophola also noted and requested a clarification in that matter.

Leader of the opposition, Wavel Ramkalawan, was more or less in agreement in that regard stating that a person should not put himself/herself as a candidate if they cannot collect at least 500 bonafide signatures for presidential elections and 50 for legislative.

Later during the committee stage, Hon. Ramkalawan explained that, following a conversation, Vice-President Vincent Meriton agreed to remove the entire proposed clause and keep signature on nomination papers at 500 for presidential elections and 50 for legislatives.

The National Assembly members consented to the proposition's removal.

Meanwhile, Hon. Gervais Henrie highlighted that electoral reform had always been the battle cry of the opposition party.

“Reforms came about because the opposition did not give up on the points which it felt needed to be addressed in regards to electoral reform. It was a challenge because electoral reform was more of a political battle which should not have been the case,” Hon. Henrie said yesterday.

On his part, Hon. Ramkalawan provided some insightful explanations of the propositions brought in the bill.

The committee stage included discussion and evaluation of the special voting facilities for pregnant women, the elderly and persons who require assistance, registration of first time voters and capping of a candidate's expenditure for election campaigning to R250,000.

The session went on until late in the evening due to an addendum brought by the opposition to allow youths who will reach 18 years after the voters' registry closes but on or before the election date, to appear on a provisional list. However, senior legal advisor Salina Sinon said that a voter can only be put on the registry if he/she has registered at the age of 18 onwards and highlighted that it would be unconstitutional to put them on a supplementary list.

MNAs from the opposition replied that not letting youths who are of legal age to register and vote goes against their Constitutional rights, while United Seychelles MNAs such as Hon. Sebastian Pillay argued that the opposition were asking for too much at this point in time.

As a means to bring consensus, Hon. Bernard Georges proposed that the Electoral Commission should opt to certify the voters' registry just before the date of an election but the commission highlighted that this will bring some challenges, especially since human resource is limited.

The National Assembly will resume today.

Elsie Pointe