The Independent Electoral Commission has an important role in every democracy. Its duty is to regulate elections, guide political parties, and ensure that the electoral process is fair, lawful, and peaceful. That responsibility must be respected. However, the IEC must also be careful not to confuse regulation with restriction.
There is a clear difference between regulating how a political group contests an election and stopping citizens from organising themselves. The IEC has the authority to ensure that any group wishing to contest elections as a political party is properly registered and recognised under the law. That is understandable. Every serious democracy needs rules, procedures, and order in its electoral system.
But those rules should not be stretched to deny citizens their basic rights.
People have the right to meet. They have the right to organise. They have the right to discuss politics, form movements, hold congresses, and decide their future. These are not privileges granted by the IEC. They are democratic rights that belong to the people.
A group may not yet be registered as a political party, but that does not mean its members cannot gather, consult, plan, or organise themselves peacefully. Registration is necessary for contesting elections. It should not be used as a weapon to stop political association.
The duty of the IEC is to manage elections, not to control political thought. It can regulate the process of nomination, registration, campaigning, voting, and results. But it should not appear to prevent citizens from assembling simply because they have not yet completed the process of party registration.
Democracy is not only about election day. It is also about the freedom of citizens to participate in public life before elections are held. Political parties and movements do not appear from nowhere. They are built through meetings, consultations, congresses, debates, and organisation. To restrict that process is to weaken democracy itself.
The IEC must therefore exercise its authority with wisdom and restraint. It must ensure that the law is followed, but it must also respect the spirit of democracy. The law should guide political activity, not silence it.
No movement should claim the full rights of a registered political party before meeting the legal requirements. At the same time, no institution should deny citizens the right to organise peacefully simply because they are still in the process of becoming a political party.
The balance is simple. The IEC can regulate how groups take part in elections. It can insist that only registered political parties contest elections, nominate candidates, and appear on the ballot paper. But it cannot take away the people’s right to meet, organise, and express their political views.
That is the difference between lawful regulation and unlawful restriction.
In a true democracy, institutions must protect the law, but they must also protect the freedoms that give democracy its meaning. The IEC must remain a referee of the electoral process, not a barrier to citizens’ political participation.
By MC Cham Junior
Business Councillor KMC
