By Lamin Cham
The Independent Electoral Commission has announced it will from today start issuing nomination papers for the April 9th National Assembly elections.
According to the commission, the papers can be collected from its regional offices across the country from 8am to 4pm from today onwards and all aspiring candidates are advised to collect papers from the regional office of the region in which they intend to contest.
Nomination of candidates for the said elections will be held from 5th to 13th March, 2022, a statement from the IEC said.
UDP to begin selection of candidates for NA elections
Meanwhile, the UDP has announced it will conduct selection of its candidates for all 53 constituencies on the 15 February. This followed the closure of all applications on January 31.
According to a statement issued by the deputy organising secretary of the party, Ebrima Dibba, the selection would be done by a committee comprising national executive committee members, two regional committee members from the region concerned and five representatives of the constituency concerned.
The statement further explained that all application letters received by constituency chairpersons should be submitted to their regional secretariat for onward submission to the national secretariat. “No constituency should hold primaries to select a candidate, however UDP supporters and officials in any constituency may discuss among themselves to build a consensus around a candidate but cannot select a candidate by themselves. Where a consensus is reached over a single candidate, that should be communicated to the selection committee but where there is no consensus around a single candidate, all applications must be forwarded to the regional secretariat,” according to the statement.
The UDP further explained that where the national executive committee decided to retain a sitting NAM as candidate in a given constituency, this must be endorsed by the constituency committee and in case there arises any disagreement on maintaining a sitting NAM, there should be dialogue to resolve the matter.
