By DOH JAMES SONKEY
Following updated statistics from Elections Cameroon, ELECAM after the March 25 senatorial polls, the South West region recorded the highest number of abstention. 153 municipal councillors abstained as only 713 out of 866 registered councilors effectively cast their votes.
On its part, the North West region registered only 2 abstentions as 1037 councilors voted out of 1039 registered voters.
In sharp contrast to the initial 800 abstention figures earlier announced on polling day of the Senate election last March 25, 2018 by the Director General of Elections of ELECAM, Abdoulaye Babale, the following day, told media professionals that it was finally 203 councilors who did not cast their votes on polling day for one reason or the other representing an abstention rate of 2.28%.
He declared that out of 10,112 registered voters nationwide, 9,909 councilors effectively cast their votes thereby representing a participation rate of 97.72%.
On how the sudden sharp drop came about within 24 hours, Mr Abdoulaye Babale explained to reporters that “the variation of figures given yesterday and those of today is due to a very limited time because some of the results were dictated to us by phone. At the close of polling stations as stipulated by the law and the time I granted my first press conference after the polls, there was some delay in the transmission of some of the results. For serenity purpose, some of the results were transmitted to us by telephone and thus, there was some confusion. We then preferred to swell abstention figures so that it can be corrected instead of giving a low abstention figure which when increased will rather lead to the suppression of votes.”