2012 Elections Monitoring
With a population over 1.9 million, 916,230 individuals were registered to vote in the 2012 parliamentary elections held on May 26th.[i] The elections, originally scheduled for February, came amidst the creation of a new party, the Democratic Congress (DC).
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"By putting myself forward I am making this democratic right – the right of a woman to be president – a concrete reality, and that alters expectations" - BOTHAINA KAMEL[1]
Polls opened across Algeria at 8am Thursday (May 10th), with nearly 21 million voters expected to take part in the historic legislative election. Schools serving as polling stations across the nation's 48 wilayas were subject to very high levels of security. No fewer than 60,000 police officers were posted in the areas around polling stations[i].
The 2012 legislative elections took place in The Gambia on March 29. At stake were 48 seats in the National Assembly. In the National Assembly, 48 members are elected by plurality vote in single-member constituencies to serve 5-year terms and 5 members are appointed by the president to serve 5-year terms.
Nearly 600,000 people were elegible to vote on Sunday's in the first round of the presidential elections, which featured a crowded field of nine candidates including former president Kumba Yala, who was overthrown in a 2003 coup.
As Senegal gears up for this weekend’s elections, the events of the campaign have already been nothing short of historic. For the first time in Senegal’s history, there are two female presidential candidates in this year’s elections, signaling an important step in women’s political participation in this region. The two women—Professor Amsatou Sow Sidibe and Madam Dieng Douma Diakhate—have been qualified by the country’s Constitutional Court in the predominantly Muslim nation out of a list of 14 presidential candidates.