The 13.5 million voters, normally corresponding to the number of Malagasy citizens, having reached the age of 18, registered in the electoral list, will be difficult to reach. Yesterday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) announced that 9,623,662 voters are officially registered in the list after the provisional arrest of the list and the electoral registers.
Cleanups had to be done on the list. After the reorganization campaign, 10,069,136 voters were registered in the list, 66,313 names had to be removed because of repetitions of identities: names or national identity card numbers, what are commonly called duplicates. 379,161 other names need to be checked again due to blemishes.
The Analamanga region has the largest number of voters with 1,638,918 registered. It is followed by the Vakinankaratra region with 810,918 voters. The Sofia and Atsinanana regions have more than 520,000 voters while the Melaky and Ihorombe regions have registered less than 140,000 voters.
Soava Andriamarotafika, rapporteur of the CENI indicated that the imperfections will be corrected. The official closing date of the electoral list is scheduled for June 10. From this April 12 and for a period of 20 days, voters will be able to check their names and information on the electoral list which should be displayed at the fokontany level.
Although the CENI indicates that registration on the electoral list can still continue until the end of May, it is difficult to imagine this body achieving the objective it has set itself to reach the total number d 13.5 million voters.
The opposition parties, in particular those of former president Marc Ravalomanana, invite his supporters to register in order to be able to vote. We remember, however, that even registered citizens, many citizens feel more and more tired and disillusioned with the political situation, which offers few alternatives. In 2018, in the first round of the presidential election, 45% of registered voters did not vote.