Thursday, 13 December 2012

No going back on deregistration of 28 parties says Jega

Jega

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, yesterday foreclosed another chance for the deregistered 28 political parties.
Besides, he said the commission did not act in subjudice of a pending case before a Lagos High Court.
Jega insisted that the parties were deregistered in compliance with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended).
He, however, said there is no plan to limit the nation to any fixed number of parties because new political parties would be registered as more cease to exist.
Jega, who spoke during an interview in Abuja, promised that the 2015 elections will be “remarkably” better than the 2011 poll.
He is optimistic that Nigeria would have overcome Boko Haram and other security challenges before the 2015 elections.
He said the delimitation of constituencies, which was last conducted in 1996, will hold in 2013, but the final say on the number of senatorial districts and federal constituencies suitable for the nation will be determined by the National Assembly.
Jega said: “As you are no doubt aware, we made a commitment to Nigerians to continue to improve upon the electoral process to continue to sanitise the electoral process and to continue to ensure that as we move from 2011 elections to the 2015 elections, there are remarkable improvements which can be measured.
“The current deregistration of political parties should be viewed in this context of bringing sanity to the electoral process.
The constitution also defines in Section 221-228 what the requirements of registration are.
“Then the provision that grants INEC the powers to register political parties also gives the National Assembly the powers to enact laws to govern the electoral process. So, the National Assembly, in compliance with that constitutional provision, enacted the Electoral Act as amended in 2010. And that is the Electoral Act that has guided our action.
“Section 78, sub-section 7 of that Electoral Act gives INEC the power to deregister political parties which are not in compliance with constitutional provisions for the registration of the parties in the first place.
“And if you are aware, we also have the powers to monitor the activities of political parties. And from the information available to us, we have incontrovertible evidence that the parties that we deregistered have not complied with those provisions of the constitution, which defined, what is required for registration.
“In particular, if you look at Sections 222 and 223, political parties are supposed to register with INEC and to have an office in Abuja ; they are supposed to hold periodic elections; they are supposed to have executives that represent in their composition the Federal Character in particular two-thirds of the state of the Federation. And also the Electoral Act, in particular, says that those who did not win any seat in any of the elections can be deregistered.
“The first exercise we did when seven parties were deregistered, we deregistered them solely on the basis of the fact that they did not even field candidates for the elections.
“But this particular deregistration of 28 political parties is not based solely on that reason alone; there are other reasons. And for each political party that INEC deregistered, we wrote a letter to them indicating the grounds upon which they were deregistered.
“Many of them received the letters. About 17 out of the 28 parties received their letters before we went public, before we announced the deregistration.
“The remaining ones, some of them we could not get them…They were supposed to have offices in Abuja but they did not.
“I will give you one example. Our officer who took the letter went to a particular address of a political party. They went there, the sign board was there but there are new tenants in the building. It is a business centre.
“So, because we also have the telephone numbers of the official, the official was telephoned and he was told that we are at your office to give you a letter and we found that there is a business centre there. He said, ‘please, take back the letter; I will come to your office and collect it’. The same parties are now saying that we did not inform them before they were deregistered. If you gave us an address and we did our best and went to that address and we cannot find you and we even called you and you said you were going to come to collect your letter, how can you accuse us of not informing you.”
Asked why INEC deregistered parties in subjudice to the ongoing court process, Jega said the commission did not spite a Lagos High Court.
He added: “We are aware of the case and we did not deregister the party that was in court. If you look at the list of the parties that were deregistered, since we know they took us to court, we did not deregister that party. We will await the outcome of that case.
“In fact, we did our best and to the best of my knowledge, we did not deregister any party that has any case in court that can be misconstrued as a violation of the court process. Any party we know that there is a court case between us and it on this issue, we did not deregister it.’
Responding to a question on whether INEC has penciled down 25 more parties for deregistration, Jega said: “It is not true that there is a figure to the parties that we are going to deregister, but as you are aware, registration and deregistration of parties are continuous processes.
“As more applicants meet the requirements of registration, we will register them. As more parties violate the requirements of the constitution and the Electoral Act, if it warrants deregistration, we will deregister them. So, it is a continuous process.”
Pressed to comment if INEC has predetermined number of parties which Nigeria should have, the INEC chairman said: “I do not have a benchmark and INEC does not have a benchmark . The legal regime that guides our action says any group that meets the requirements for registration as a party, we should register them. The same legal regime says that under some conditions, you can deregister. All we are doing is those who meet the registration we register, those who do not meet the registration, we deregister.
“Our hope is that if we are consistently doing this, then with time, people will know that if you are registered as a political party, then you must be in full compliance with the requirements for the registration.”
Regarding the delimitation of constituencies, Jega said: “We are determined to conclude it before the 2015 elections.
“We will commence the delimitation by the first quarter of 2013 and we should be able to complete it by the end of 2013 or the first quarter of 2014. As you rightly pointed out. The last time the constituency delimitation was done was in 1996. And it is a constitutional requirement that it should be done every 10 years.”
Culled from THE NATION

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