PRESS RELEASE

The Press Release below was issued by the following political parties on 18 September 2015:

Parties:

·        Independent Conservative Union of Seychelles

·        Lalyans Seselwa

·        Seychelles National Party

·        Seychelles Party for Social Justice and Democracy

·        Seychelles United Party

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The above 5 opposition parties met with 4 members of the Electoral Commission on Sep 18^th 2015 at National House to discuss a number of issues related to the forthcoming general elections in Seychelles. Given the limited time available for discussion, the parties only had time to focus on 2 items:

·        the lack of a credible voters’ register

·        the EC’s failure to provide political parties with an electronic copy of the voters’ register despite a court ruling directing them to do so since July 31^st 2015.

The EC admitted that the current voters’ list did not reconcile with officially published reports of the National Bureau of Statistics as a result of which its credibility is now in question.

Political parties agreed that an urgent reconciliation exercise should be done using the latest available information from the NBS and that held by the Department of Immigration. The idea was to produce a list of residents of Seychelles who as of May 31^st 2015:

·        held Seychellois citizenship

·        were 18 years of age or above

·        were considered to be resident; a suggestion was to consider only those Seychellois who have resided in Seychelles for a period of at least 3 months during the period 1^st June 2014 to 31^st May 2015.

It was argued that this new list should effectively tally with the latest population report when taking into account the expatriate population in Seychelles.

EC agreed that this exercise would be done within a week and the results presented to the political parties by Friday Sep 25^th 2015 at 0900.

Also on the voters’ register, political parties felt that the EC was in contempt of court for not having provided the electronic copy as directed by the court. Political parties argued that the proposed amendments to the Elections Act were unnecessary and did not specify the format in which the data would be presented. The parties requested the EC to ensure that the data provided to them was in Microsoft Excel 2010 format with the following fields NIN, Surname, Names, Gender, Date of Birth and District. It was pointed out to the EC that in the current amendments proposed to the Elections Act to provide electronic data to political parties, the field for “Date of Birth” had been left out. The EC agreed that this will be taken up urgently with Government and parliamentarians.

In the meantime, it was agreed that the other remaining issues including rules related to the electoral process itself, financing of political parties, voter identification, new districts and local government elections would be discussed at weekly meetings to be organised by the EC with all parties beginning next Friday Sep 25^th 2015.

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Ahmed Afif                                         Wavel Ramkalawan                         Robert Ernesta

Secretary General                           Party Leader                                      Party Leader

Lalyans Seselwa                                                Seychelles National Party             Seychelles United Party

Alexia Amesbury                                                              Michael Chadstone

Party Leader                                                                      Independent Conservative Union of Seychelles

Sey. Party for Social Justice and Democracy