The Director of Elections of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, says the party maintains its position that the call by the Electoral Commission for a new voters’ register implies unnecessary cost and a waste of time on a system that already exists and is legitimate.
Speaking on GBC’s Current Affairs programme, ‘Focus’, Mr. Afriyie Ankrah said the idea of focusing on the NIA card as the valid document for registration will end up disenfranchising more than 60 percent of Ghanaian voters.
He said the EC seeking on amendment of the Constitutional Instrument on the management of the voters register will distort the country’s most relevant democratic process which is election.
The MP for Sekondi and Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communication, Andrew Egyapa Mercer, said the NDC has consistently refused to sit down to amicably solve this back and forth controversy about a new voters’ register because they boycott every IPAC meeting.
He said the amendment will not disenfranchise people who do not have Ghana Cards because alternative provisions exist for such people. Mr. Mercer said the EC must also come out and clear the air about the misconceptions that this new voters’ register is generating.
The CEO and President of Imani Africa, a Policy think-tank, Franklin Cudjoe laid the blame of all the misconceptions and antagonism going on about the new voters’ register on the EC.
According to him, the EC has over the period been inconsistent in its operations and point of view on allegations of over bloated register and deliberate failure of its systems during elections. Mr. Cudjoe said the existing systems being used by the EC has been working since the introduction of the biometric technology, and there is big question mark as to why the system has been changed suddenly.
He said the country must invest in a consistent system and find a way of re-adjusting it to get rid of ghost names instead of entirely changing the system.
