The NEC should streamline and simplify complaints procedures, in line with international principles and best practice, to ensure better understanding and more
efficient conduct of complaints.

Polling places should open at 6 am instead of 8 am and close at 4 pm rather than 6 pm to ensure that counting can be undertaken in daylight.

More comprehensive, feasible and viable procedures for verifying campaign financing and expenditure should be developed. There also should be a more will to enforce such regulations, including increasing the accountability of Parties and Candidates, ensuring more effective political competition, preserving the integrity of the electoral process by increasing transparency, enhancing accountability, eliminating corruption and strengthening the rule of law. The NEC should communicate clearly that the distribution of money or goods by candidates to possible voters is prohibited and against international standards.

The nomination of candidates should be improved as several deficiencies occurred in the crucial period before the elections.

The NEC should establish criteria for possible candidates thereby excluding convicted war criminals. Further, the NEC should carefully investigate the eligibility of all nominees.

The nomination fees (US$2,500 for Presidency, US$1,500 for Vice-Presidency, for Senate US$750, for HoR US$500) should be abandoned since they particularly
disadvantage women and pre-select candidates on the grounds of financial means instead of social and political merits.

The NEC should rigorously verify the accuracy of the names and signatures provided and double check them with the FRR before publishing them in the
national gazette.

The NEC and civil society organisations should make serious efforts to improve the understanding of the wider population about the purpose of a run-off election.

Measures should be taken to ensure rigor and transparency in making changes to the voter roll if voters move and need to transfer their voting location. Further, a future voter registration and verification period should be clearly specified and sufficient time allowed for the process.

As a state-broadcaster, ELBC should provide clear and tangible impartiality in its performance as a public service.

As a state-broadcaster, ELBC airtime bought by political parties during an election campaign period should be clearly identified as such.

Private independent media should also provide balance in electoral coverage. Although their position as commercial entities gives them a different status, to that of
a state or public broadcaster, international rules of fair and professional journalism imply certain limits, especially in a context of an electoral campaign.

International partners of the Legislature should adopt a programme approach to efficiently coordinate their support to the national assembly, ensuring accountability
and the proper achievement of commonly agreed goals and objectives.

The remuneration and allowances of Legislators should be in line with international standards and based on a constitutional provision ensuring that Legislators’ income is in line with the income range of senior civil servants and comparative private sector position salaries. The example of the calculation of salaries and allowances for MPs in South Africa should be considered.

Although Members of Legislature have been democratically elected by the electorate, their impunity as Legislators should not be used to release them from
facing responsibility for past crimes against humanity.

Reconciliation will only work in Liberia if those that stand accused of committing crimes against humanity face justice through the courts. There can be no
meaningful reconciliation without individuals accepting responsibility for their past crimes and wrong-doings. If being elected to the new Senate or House of Representatives is misused as an excuse for avoiding justice through the courts this will create a climate of impunity that will prevent Liberia from entering a new and more peaceful future. Such a misuse of immunity goes against universally recognised principles of international law. At the same time, the government and newly elected Legislature must make sure that procedures are put in place for citizens who wish to take persons to court for crimes committed against them in the past can do so.

We suggest the AN should adopt of a Data Protection Law that could guarantee a uniform protection of the citizens’ sensitive data and guarantee the privacy of the political decisions made by the electorate. We also believe that the political forces should agree not to use the current information available through the Programa Maisanta as a tool of pressure on and intimidation of the electorate.

The EU EOM considers that it would be convenient to harmonize with the principles enshrined in the 1999 Constitution. One way to achieve maximum clarity and consistency between the various legal provisions may be to centralize all the crucial election-related legislation in one comprehensive code, through the adoption of a new Basic Law that replaces the LOSPP. The new Basic Law should also take stock of the recent technical development in electronic voting. The prohibition of public funding to parties during the electoral campaign should be reconsidered along the lines of the constitutional provisions that allow already the possibility to provide funding to specific parties’ activities such as programs and projects.

The CNE should consider the undertaking of an independent audit of the REP, possibly in conjunction with the ID Card Program of the ONIDEX and the Civil Registry. Consideration should be given to a complete overhaul of the Civil Registry and make the voter registration an automatic derivation of the Civil Registry.

The CNE should be stricter in enforcing polling procedures, especially related to the prohibition to campaign. Clearer regulations on polling station opening and closing procedures should also be passed. In addition, stronger focus should be placed by the CNE on improving the training of polling station officials, as well as clarity should be brought in defining the role of the electoral coordinators at all levels (regional, local and polling centers).

The CNE should invest more financial and technical resources in the organization of its audit activities. Audit session should start considerably earlier in the process, with procedures elaborated and published well in advance to the commencement of such activities. Consideration should be given by the CNE to the establishment of two types of audits: public audits, starting two months before the elections, to be opened to all stakeholders, and full system audits, of the duration of various months, to be conducted by institutions with appropriate expertise and established reputation. The full system audits should accompany the entire system development process.

The CNE should give immediate priority to the development of in-depth civic education programs targeting the entire voting population on the general functioning of the VMs. These programs should be integrated with specific voter information campaigns in the pre-electoral periods.

The technological investments and related developments introduced by the CNE in the electoral process should be made more immediately perceivable and exploitable as a quality service for all stakeholders. For example, the level of IT applications used in the Parliamentary Elections would allow for an immediate amelioration of the results aggregation process and their faster publication, even online.

Specific mechanisms to distribute free time and space on the media in an equitable manner among the main electoral contenders, which is not excessively onerous for the media companies, should be put in place.

In order to ensure that all future elections are held throughout the entire country on the basis of internationally recognised principles for genuine democratic elections, elections in LTTE controlled areas in the North and East should be administered and supervised by an international body acceptable to both parties to the peace process. This would take place for an agreed transitional period.