Mr Manneh,
                  I believe you understand the mechanics of polling by virtue
of your past experience as a poll worker. I however find your approach to the
very real potential for problems advanced by Mr Ceesay quite troubling.
Gambians will go to the polls with a government that has consistently and
violently done everything to subvert the rules and regulations that are
supposed to guide and define the elections. Having already poisoned the
atmosphere leading up to the actual voting, you want the very people who have
borne the brunt of all the government's malpractice to take on the added risk
of having their ballots carried to far off central counting locations at the
very governments turfs where the worst of the regime's hatchet men abode.
Regardless of all the theoretical protection you believe can preclude fraud
at the point of transportation and or counting, I am convinced the
preponderance of the evidence point to the government cheating. You can only
expect opponents of the government to go into the polls with full faith in
the integrity of the whole electoral process if they were not justifiably
convinced that the government is disinclined to compete fairly and that the
I.E.C was constituted by crooks bent on perpetuating fraud. Why should
politicians facing these very blatant hazards that would compromise their
hard fought battle that has claimed lives and properties on the far-fetched
assumption that it is hard to cheat on election day? Remember we are not
talking about running for major of Seattle here. These are thugs who think
nothing of physically rounding up people and ejecting them from poll lines on
election day. This is exactly what they have done in Jimara constituency in
the last parliamentary elections when they realized that the UDP candidate
was going to edge out their guy. They physically removed the voters from
queues and locked them up!
     I would also respectfully disagree with you on the strength and
independence of our judiciary. By and large the judiciary has not upheld the
rule of law and except on a few isolated cases they have woefully failed.
They succumb to armtwisting from the executive by bottling up important and
time sensitive cases with constitutional implications. As things stand, the
judges are sitting on the vital case of the constitutionality of the current
I.E.C. They have announced that they would render a verdict in October! What
good is that going to do?In the meantime Gabriel Roberts and his gang are
trying their best to facilitate an overt cheating scheme.
      Consequently, the united opposition will not relent on the requirement
to count on the spot because they cannot afford to. The election officials
have manifested a lack of integrity so grave that no sane person can proceed
on the notion that they will ensure that the system prevents cheating. If you
were running the I.E.C I would be a lot more amenable to taking your word
that your only interest would be to conduct a free and fair election. With
crooks we should all be unwilling to take even the remotest of chances. the
best way to guarantee fairness is for all counting to be done at the 800
polling stations enabling all the party representatives to get accurate
tallies on the spot and communicate it directly to their party command
centers. This way the I.E.C would only validate numbers already known to reps
present. They will not be able to cheat at all under this scenario.
Karamba

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