Guinean government threatens to ban travel to those who do not register

The general director of the Guinean Technical Support Office for the Electoral Process (GTAPE), Gabriel Djibril Baldé, warned that citizens who do not register may be prevented from traveling, which jurist Horta Na Doa says is not provided for by law.

The director of GTAPE justified the measure, to be taken in coordination with the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the police, will be applied after a month of electoral registration started on the 10th.

Djibril Baldé warned that within two weeks, checkpoints will be posted at all borders in Guinea-Bissau and citizens with active electoral capacity who are not registered will be prevented from passing.

“Electoral registration is mandatory,” observed the general director of GTAPE, adding that in two weeks of the process, around 250,000 potential voters were registered in the registers.

The census runs until February and is expected to enroll around 844,000 voters for the legislative elections scheduled for June 4, 2023.

Guinean lawyer Hotna Na Doa acknowledged that the law requires all citizens to register, but stressed that there is no legal device that penalizes anyone who does not do so.

“It has been practice, since the electoral registration processes began in Guinea-Bissau, to use this expedient, but it is not included in the law,” noted the jurist, graduated from the Faculty of Law of Bissau.

Hotna Na Doa reinforced that all Guinean citizens are obliged, by law, to register in the electoral roll, although, he stressed, they are not obliged to vote.

With information from Sapo