Lamin Manneh Says UDP Election Results Plan Is About Transparency, Not Undermining IEC

By Fatou Sillah

Lamin Manneh, the United Democratic Party’s deputy secretary for external affairs, has defended the party’s plan to independently compile and publish results from the Dec. 5 presidential election, saying the initiative is intended to increase transparency and public confidence rather than undermine the Independent Electoral Commission.

Mr. Manneh said the IEC remained the only institution mandated to conduct the election and officially declare its outcome. But he argued that because results are counted and announced publicly at individual polling stations, political parties, journalists, and ordinary citizens are free to collect and independently tally those figures.

“The IEC is mandated to conduct the elections and proclaim the results at the end, but from the day the legislation was enacted for spot counting, every Gambian citizen has earned the right to publish those results because they are public information,” Mr. Manneh said.

His comments come amid debate over the UDP’s intention to publish its own tally of election results before the IEC completes its official national tabulation.

Mr. Manneh said the process would rely on results announced at polling stations after voting ends. Once ballots are counted, he said, representatives of political parties and candidates verify the figures before the IEC presiding officer signs the results sheet. Copies are provided to party representatives, while another is transmitted through the commission’s official process, and a copy is displayed at the polling station.

Because those results are publicly available, Mr. Manneh argued, any political party or organization with representatives across the country could collect the figures and produce an independent tally.

He said the UDP had developed software to capture polling-station results as they are announced and make the running figures available to the public. The party, he added, has offered to give the IEC access to the system so commission officials can see the same results being collected by the UDP.

Mr. Manneh said he expected the party’s final tally to correspond with the IEC’s official figures because both would ultimately originate from results certified by IEC officials at polling stations.

“We are not subverting elections; we are bringing in another degree of transparency,” he said. “Why should anybody be afraid of transparency in elections?”

The proposal has drawn scrutiny over whether competing announcements of election figures could create confusion or tensions before the IEC declares the official result. Mr. Manneh rejected suggestions that the UDP’s plan could contribute to violence or disorder, saying independent verification would instead provide another layer of scrutiny and strengthen confidence in the electoral process.

He said the party was continuing to engage with the IEC through stakeholder meetings and other discussions and maintained that the initiative was consistent with the UDP’s stated commitment to credible, free, and fair elections.

For Mr. Manneh, the distinction is between independently reporting publicly available polling-station figures and formally declaring the winner of an election — a responsibility he acknowledged remains with the IEC.