The Chief Electoral Officer of the Independent Electoral Commission open his defence yesterday at the Kanifing Magistrates Court presided over by Magistrate Bubacarr Secka. Mr. Ceesay has been standing trial for allegedly forging the signature of the former Chairman of IEC, Mr. Ndondi Njie, in an apparent bid to procure electoral materials from Code Incorporated, a Canadian company dealing in electoral materials.

According to Mr. Ceesay, one of his duties as Chief Electoral Officer is to advise the commission on electoral matters. He adduced that under the tenures of Dr. Tilewa Johnson, Gabriel Roberts and Ndondi Njie, all the electoral programmes the commission had set about to accomplish were implemented by him in his capacity as the Chief Electoral Officer, to enable the commission to carry out its mandate.

Mr. Ceesay said that in March 2005, the IEC was required to prepare a document on all the electoral activities that were planned for the period of 2005 to 2008 and the plans were filed in a document called Donor Assistance Document. This document, he adduced, was approved by the then chairman, Gabriel Roberts, and the contents of the document included materials, programmes, institutional capacity development, human resource development, deletion exercise and supplementary voter registration for the conduct of Presidential and National Assembly elections. He said that it was anticipated that the presidential elections would take place in October 2006 while the National Assembly elections were to be held in January 2007.

He adduced that a consultative meeting was called to enable donors to select areas of interest to enable the IEC purchase the materials needed to conduct the election. The said meeting, he added, was chaired by the Finance and Economic Affairs Minister, Hon. Bala Gaye.
Mr. Ceesay further testified that during the meeting the UNDP volunteered provide an expert to identify key areas of choice to the donors. This contract, he said, was assigned to one Simon Clerk of the International Foundation of Electoral Services from America (I.F.E.S.).

Mr. Ceesay informed the court that UNDP later contacted the IEC to report that Mr. Clerk never reported to them on the contract he was assigned. In light of no report for the donor, Mr. Ceesay testified that the then American Ambassador, Joseph Stafford, met the I.E.C to express his concern about what he termed as a long silence on the matter of the situation of the Donor Assistance Document- and election were fast- approaching. He said that after the meeting all the units of the Commission met and requested Mr. Ceesay to give an idea of all the materials that would be require for electoral activities from 2005 to 2008 especially those materials to be purchased from abroad.

He explained that after he had catalogued all the materials needed by the I.E.C, he gave it to the then Chairman, Ndondi Njie, who further demanded for a pro forma invoice from abroad. He said that after his discussion with Mr. Njie he contacted the Canadian company called Code Incorporated, a company that specialized in electoral supplies and had provided electoral materials for I.E.C since 1997. Mr. Ceesay adduced that he thus ordered for a pro forma invoice for the materials required by I.E.C under the instruction of I.E.C. The pro forma invoice, he said, contained 120,000 registration cards, 120 laminators, 100 cameras and films, indelible ink, poll tight seals, rectangular seals and tamper evidence bags. He said that when the pro forma was presented to Mr. Njie his reaction was that the figures were too high, asking him to reduce the quantity to 25%, which he did.

Mr. Ceesay further adduced that Mr. Njie later called him into his office to inform him that he was scheduled for a meeting with the president, His Excellency Yahya Jammeh, who promised to fund the electoral process. Mr. Ceesay told the court that after receiving the new invoice, Mr. Ndondi Njie ordered him verbally to place an order for the materials to Code Incorporated, saying that the commission would pay on receipt of the expected funding. He said that after receiving the invoice he wrote a memo to Mr. Njie and gave him details of Code Incorporated’s bank details of the company and made several copies to the commission members, namely Alh. Mustapha Carayol, former Vice Chairman, Aja Saffie Njie, Director of Administration, and Harry Sambou, Director of Corporation.

Still testifying, Mr. Ceesay explained that Mr. Njie later approved the invoice and “asked me to give it to the Chief Accountant, Lamin Cham.” He however adduced that the accountant told him that “the Chairman knows that there is no fund to cover this invoice,” to which Mr. Ceesay responded that it was an instruction given to him to carry out.

Mr. Ceesay said that while he was in Mr. Ndondi Njie’s office, Mr. Sulayman Mboob, a commission member, came to report to Mr. Njie that there seemed to be a problem at the Finance department with regard to the provision of the said fund.