Workshop on Constitutional Commission’s elections held

By Aymen Eljali.

Tripoli, 3 May 2013:

A workshop to . . .[restrict]encourage voter awareness in the upcoming election for the 60-member commission that will devise the constitution was held in the Waddan Hotel in Tripoli on Monday and Tuesday.

Speakers at the workshop, run by the High National Election Commission (HNEC) and supported by the UNDP, included Nuri Elabbar, head of HNEC, and Kate Sullivan, chief technical advisor of UNDP’s Libya Electoral Assistance Project.

The two-day event focused on a number on areas, including the role of women, that of private and public organisations and the need of take on board lessons learned from the 2012 Congressional contest – such as the delay in listing the names of candidates and voters and, later, the delay in the arrival of election material and ballot papers. Mistakes had to be avoided, participants were told, as they undermined people’s confidence in the process.

The workshop was also told that there needed to be more registration and campaign time in the Constitutional Commission elections than was the case in the Congressional ones, and more support from the Ministry of Culture in making people aware about the importance of elections.

The value of civil society organisations in educating people about the relationship between freedom and democracy was stressed.

A number of civil society organisation have also been organising awareness campaigns about the Constitutional Commission elections. [/restrict]