Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Peter Otokunor, has argued that the leadership of the Electoral Commission (EC) should be prosecuted over the compilation of the new voters register.
In an interview, he insisted the Commission in its pursuit to compile a new electoral roll caused the country significant financial loss.
“Any serious government should be looking at taking the Electoral Commission on for causing financial loss to the state. Clearly, if they had gone through the limited registration exercise which we had advised to register some 600,000 people in addition to the old register, we will be hovering around this same figure we have. Perhaps we wouldn’t have spent over a billion cedis for this whole exercise”.
Peter Otokunor
Meanwhile, representing the New Patriotic Party on the same platform, Director of Research and Elections for the NPP, Evans Nimako, contends that the new register is a great improvement on previous registers.
“We think this is a clean exercise that has been conducted. I think for us, the numbers that we have is a clear representation of those Ghanaians who are eligible to vote in the election of President and Members of Parliament”, he said.
Evan Nimako
Various stakeholders including the opposition NDC have downplayed the Electoral Commission’s (EC) defense for the compilation of a new register arguing that the numbers recorded during the mass voter registration exercise would not have been so different if the old register was used.
EC mop up registration ends
The Electoral Commission (EC) on Sunday, August 9, ended the two-day mop up exercise as a follow-up to the official 37-day voters’ registration to ensure a credible register for the presidential and parliamentary elections.
The exercise started on June 30 and officially ended on August 6, in 33,367 polling stations, which was done in six phases with each phase assigned six days for eligible applicants to register.
This was followed by the two-day mop up exercise on Saturday, August 8 to Sunday, August 9, 2020 at the various district offices of the EC across the country to enable eligible applicants who were unable to register in the mass registration exercise to do so.
The first and second phases of the exercise were characterized by overcrowding, necessitating the Commission to introduce a queue management system and mobile registration to address the situation.
The Commission projected to register a total of 15 million citizens but a little over 16.6 million were registered on the last day of the 37-day exercise.
The Electoral Commission of Ghana has indicated that the mass registration exercise is the last one it will ever conduct again.
“This is going to be the last time where we are going to compile a mass register like this and even beyond that, the Commission is anticipating that in future register compilation, when we are adding people onto it, everyone will come with an identity document, which is the passport and the Ghana card, so, that’s why we want to do everything possible [to make sure it is clean].
“The de-duplication process has been triggered. We want to make sure that all those who are not qualified to be on the roll are removed”.
