Torrential rains and mud-drenched roads could prevent thousands of Liberians from voting in the country’s first postwar elections in October, residents and officials in the West African country say.
In parts of Sinoe County, a region of dense jungle east of the capital Monrovia, mud is waist-deep and the road is littered with abandoned four-wheel drive trucks. Bridges have crumbled or been washed away.
“There are 2,000 people in my place and we have to cross the river to get to the polling station,” said Jimmy Roberts, chief of Panama village, 155 miles east of Monrovia.
“We have a canoe and a raft, they can both take two people. But when the river is full there is no way to cross,” he told Reuters in a recent interview.
Landmark postwar election
The presidential and parliamentary polls on Oct. 11 are meant to draw a line under a civil war which killed a quarter of a million people as self-appointed generals with names like “Bad Boy” and “Butt Naked” gave child soldiers weapons and drugs.
The conflict, which dragged on for 14 years, tore the country’s infrastructure to pieces as looters ripped up anything they could sell for scrap. Even the capital is still without running water or electricity.
Former president Charles Taylor went into exile in 2003 and a peace deal was signed, but corruption within a caretaker government of former belligerents has worsened years of decay, leaving election organizers with a logistical nightmare.
Nearly 150 polling sites out of more than 3,000 are designated “inaccessible” by the United Nations, meaning they are more than four days walk from the nearest drop-off point for voting materials.
“The state of the infrastructure is the biggest problem we face,” said Frances Johnson-Morris, head of the National Elections Commission. “There are only three paved highways in the country.”
Urban advantage
Northern Lofa and Nimba counties present the biggest challenge. Some fear access problems could further skew an election heavily weighted in favor of the urban population.
Monrovia and the surrounding Montserrado county have more than a third of the 1.3 million registered voters, partly because access to registration sites is easier and partly due to an influx of displaced civilians in the war.
“There are lots of people who didn’t register and lots of people who have registered but cannot vote because of the distances involved,” said Harrison Kai of the Center for Law and Human Rights Education in Sinoe County.
“Many of these people have to walk four, five even eight hours to get to a polling booth. Some are old or disabled,” he said. “People forget that Monrovia is not Liberia.”
Liberians will be allowed to vote in areas where they have not registered but only for the presidential ticket — any votes cast for local representatives and senators outside the relevant district will be disallowed.
That has angered some civilians still unable to return home after their villages were torched or looted during the war, who have said they will refuse to vote if they are left stranded in refugee camps when election day comes.
