Blueprint for election Task Force released

Page 3: September 16, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
WITH 12 weeks to Election 2008, the National Elections Security Task Force has made public the blueprint by which it hopes to ensure credible and violence-free polls.
The strategy, contained in a document titled, “Know Your Responsibilities as a Security Officer”, specifies the activities of the members of the task force on election day, their role in curbing election infraction and how they are to relate to the various players, including the media.
It said security officials to be deployed to maintain the peace on voting day were to ensure the safety of all election materials by guarding and escorting them, ensuring orderliness of voting queues and taking steps to prevent violence before, during and after the elections.
The National Election Security Task Force is made up of personnel from the Police Service, the Immigration Service, the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), the Fire Service and the Prisons Service.
They are required to take measures to prevent any activity which has the potential of disturbing the process, carry out lawful instructions from the presiding or returning officers of the Electoral Commission in relation to the elections and stand at the end of the queues at 5.00 p.m. prompt on election day to ensure that no person joined them after that time.
Additionally, the security personnel are forbidden from accepting gifts, presents, favours, gratitude or promises that could be interpreted as seeking to influence them in the performance of their official responsibilities. They are not to leave the polling stations during voting and before counting and declaration of results and are to ensure the security of the ballot boxes to designated sites after the voting exercise.
The brochure admonishes security personnel not to “take part in the actual administration of the elections, do not check the ID cards of voters, do not take part in the counting of votes, do not harass or intimidate any candidate or voter and not to be partisan”.
Touching on their relationship with the media, the brochure said security personnel were to refer media personnel to the public affairs directorate/unit or the command headquarters. They were also admonished not to intimidate the media but be polite to them. But they were not to give out information that could or might jeopardise the conduct of the elections.
On election day, security personnel are required to be punctual and alert on duty, treat everyone fairly, be open and honest, be team players, use minimum force when necessary and provide responsible, effective and high quality services with honesty and integrity.
The electoral offences outlined in the document included giving one’s voter ID card to another person to vote, forging, counterfeiting or fraudulently destroying a ballot paper or the official mark on a ballot paper, supplying a ballot paper to any person without authority, selling or offering to sell a ballot paper to any person, as well as purchasing or offering to purchase a ballot paper from any person.
Other offences are intentionally putting anything other than the ballot paper into the ballot box, possessing a ballot paper which has an official mark without authorisation, opening, taking, destroying or interfering with a ballot box, ballot paper in use or intended to be used for the purposes of an election, printing a ballot paper or anything capable of being used as a ballot paper at an election, making a mark on a ballot paper issued to somebody with the intention of it being counted as the vote of that person and voting at an election at which one is not entitled to vote.
The rest are voting more than once at an election, interfering with the work of a presiding officer, removing posters lawfully posted in connection with the election, compelling somebody to vote in a particular way, impeding or preventing a voter from freely exercising his/her right to vote, assisting a political party or candidate to gain unfair advantage over others and making or publishing by written or spoken word or by song a false statement about the personal character of a candidate or the conduct of a political party.