EC Can’t Tell Us What To Do – Yaw Boateng Gyan

National Organiser of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Yaw Boateng Gyan has stated emphatically that the Electoral Commission (EC) has no authority to tell the NDC what to do at its Sunyani congress. According to him, the EC has only been invited to play a supervisory role to ensure free and fair elections and not to dictate to the party which procedure of voting to adopt.

There are reports the NDC may be introducing ten ballot boxes for delegates from each region to vote simultaneously at the Sunyani Congress but the campaign team of the Former First Lady have kicked against the move and have since petitioned the party’s General Secretary.

They had even threatened to resort to the Courts to halt the process, if the party goes ahead with the intended plan.

This may have caused the Electoral Commission to raised concerns about the plans by the leadership of NDC to conduct voting on regional basis at the upcoming congress.

But speaking in an interview with Kwame Nkrumah “Tikese” on Okay FM 101.7, Yaw Boateng Gyan pointed out that the NDC has a subcommittee which works hand in hand with its planning committee and offers advisory services to the party on how to conduct the elections; therefore the EC needs to only listen to the NDC and play its supervisory role.

“The EC is just coming to supervise our elections and not to dictate to us what we have to do. The NDC has a sub-committee which works with the planning committee…so the EC has to listen and supervise to ensure that the elections is conducted in a free and fair way,” he noted.

He emphasized that the EC does not have any say regarding how the governing NDC conducts its elections, pointing out that no law mandates the electoral body to get involved in the internal voting affairs of a political party.

“We can chose to conduct the election like the NPP did without necessarily converging at Sunyani so the EC has no say whatsoever,” he added.

Source: Beatrice Adepa Frempong/Peacefmonline.com