The Angolan National Electoral Commission (CNE) decided this Friday not to implement early voting for the general elections on August 24, due to the “logistical challenges it imposes and the” little time “for its materialization.
The decision was approved at the IX Extraordinary Plenary of the CNEheld this Friday, at the headquarters of that body, in Luanda, “after an exhaustive evaluation of the regulation of early voting”.
“The plenary sessions pointed out its importance (of early voting), because it is provided for in the Constitution, however its implementation presents many challenges in terms of its logistical organization, as well as in terms of a very scarce resource, which is time,” he said this Friday. the spokesman of the CNE, Lucas Quilundo, in declarations to the journalists.
“This is how the plenary session decided not to implement early voting for these general elections on August 24,” he said.
Lucas Quilundo explained, when questioned by journalists, that it was not a withdrawal, since there had never been a decision on early voting before: “The decision was not made before, it was made now and therefore there is no going back here”.
“At no time did the CNE announce that it would carry out early voting, but it was creating the conditions, so it organized the international seminar to collect experiences and see if it was feasible to carry out early voting or not,” he argued.
The elections “must be carried out on the basis of electoral registers, these registers are carried out based on the mapping of the voting tables, the mapping of the voting tables must be completed and closed up to 45 days before the scheduled date for the elections , this for the normal election”, he pointed out.
“If the law establishes that early voting must take place between the 15th and 10th days set for the elections, it implies that the entire process leading to its materialization would also have to be advanced and therefore it is clear that for the reasons and challenges it poses, not it was feasible to carry out an early vote”, stressed Lucas Quilundo.
The plenary session of the CNE also addressed electoral observation and thanked for the information on the start of the selection process for polling station members.
The general elections in Angola, the fifth in the political history of the country, They are called for next August 24.
In the scrutiny, the President of the Republic will be elected, who will be the head of the list of the political party or coalition of the most voted party, and the deputies to the National Assembly (parliament).
Source: Observadora
