Prepared to sign lists if given two hours: Coalition

Officials of Progressive Coalition have said that they need two hours to sign the remaining voters’ lists, and that they are prepared to sign the lists if given that much time.

Officials of Progressive Coalition said this at a press conference held at M. Kunooz today.

Campaign official of Progressive Coalition Mohamed Asmali said that they have not been given enough time to sign the voters’ lists for the Local Council Election scheduled for Saturday.

“The 16 lists that were sent later need to be checked before they are signed. We need time to do this. We requested to be given two additional hours. We said that we will let them know when we complete checking the lists. We are prepared to sign the lists if given two hours,” said Asmali.

He criticised the Elections Commission and said that the commission had not prepared enough for the Local Council Election scheduled for Saturday.

“After the Supreme Court issued a guideline to be followed by the Elections Commission, we hoped that the commission would make preparations in advance. But this is sadly not the case,” he said.

He said that the commission first had to be requested repeatedly to provide the full list of voters, and that the list thus obtained had several names repeated and addresses wrong.

Asmali said that Elections Commission does everything last minute, which means that the parties do not have enough time to do the necessary.

“It’s very difficult, when they announce late at night and ask candidates to complete signing lists within 24 hours. If EC shared this information with candidates earlier, they could have come up with some arrangement,” he said.

Speaking at the press conference, Vilimaafannu MP Ahmed Nihan said that minor problems exist within Progressive Coalition, but they will be solved before the election on Saturday.

He said that Elections Commission cannot decide to not hold the election on Saturday, and that senior officials of Elections Commission should be replaced in order to rectify the mistakes being made by the commission.