The Registration of Voters and the Electoral Campaign

Abstract

The National Electoral Council (NEC) was sworn in on Saturday evening. On Monday 11 May 1992 Mr Kassoma, the new Minister for Territorial Administration, summoned me to his office to tell me that the NEC had already met and taken a number of key decisions. The most important one was that electoral registration would begin nine days later, on 20 May, and end by 31 July. This was contrary to the Electoral Law, which stipulated that the dates of the registration period should be announced 30 days in advance. The delays in setting up the NEC, and the consequently very short time now remaining before the election date, made it impossible to meet this condition. In any event, everyone throughout the country was chafing for registration to begin. The drawback was that there would be precious little time in which to organise the administrative and logistical requirements.