Guinea’s opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo said on Tuesday that he doesn’t believe the country’s legislative election can be held next week, citing flaws in the voter roll which he says will take too much time to fix. His critical assessment contrasts sharply with that of the United Nations special envoy to the region, who mediated a six-hour-long session Monday between the country’s warring opposition and ruling party, and who told reporters upon returning to Senegal that he remains confident the election will go ahead on Sept. 24. “The date of the election is still Sept. 24,” Said Djinnit said at his residence in the Senegalese capital. “As of today we are a few steps away from the election. Nothing permits me to say otherwise.” The U.N. has so far mediated 13 meetings between the two sides in an attempt to return the West African nation to constitutional rule. The country’s last parliamentary elections were held in 2002, and were first rescheduled in 2007. The repeated delays have spanned three presidents and have left the nation without a functioning legislature.
At the Monday meeting, the National Independent Electoral Commission agreed to many of the demands of the opposition, including agreeing to publish and post the voter list in precincts across the nation, a process which Djinnit said will be completed by Thursday. He said the election body also agreed to split polling stations that had 1,000 or more registered voters into two or more voting bureaus, in order to reduce the waiting time.
But Diallo, who came in second in Guinea’s presidential election three years ago, and who heads the largest opposition party, said it is not physically possible for the election commission to accomplish all the changes they had demanded in time for the vote to be held.
Full Article: Guinea Opposition Says Vote Needs to Be Delayed – ABC News.
