Election update

Hello All :)

Just a quick update. We are all fine! The voting process seems to have gone fairly peacefully - although not without hiccoughs. The new, special, electronic voter registration systems seem to have failed in many instances and polling stations had to resort to printouts of the voters register. In addition, the number of rejected ballot papers appears to be disproportionately high (one of my colleagues pointed out that 'rejected ballots' is running in third place!) The main problem currently is the slow speed with which the results are being reported (i.e.  24 hours after most polling stations closed, we have still barely reached 50% of results reported).

Hopefully people will be able to cope with the delay, and accept that it is a process issue, not a manipulation issue. Legally, the electoral body has 7 days to report final results, but they have given an undertaking that full provisional results will be ready within 48 hours. Hopefully they manage to keep to that timetable, or people may start to express their unhappiness...

I am just back from a Crisis Management Team meeting, and we have agreed that we will be working tomorrow (although with a close ear to the ground) so please do continue to pray that things remain calm and that 'the people' will wait patiently for, and be accepting of, the result.