EC Must Allow Us To Audit The Voter�s Register If There Is Nothing Wrong With It

Former National Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu has demanded from the Electoral Commission an audit of the 2012 voter�s register to prove the commission right or wrong over the complaint that the voter�s register is bloated. �Everybody knows the voter�s register is not good and if it is good then allow us to do the audit and the audit will prove whether we are wrong or right. The audit will be done with residential addresses so that we can visit homes of the voters to ask after the names in the register. �If we say 14 million people have registered it doesn�t mean we have to go to all the 14 million voters� house; that is why in statistics we have sample which is statistically accepted because it represents the entire list of voters. We will rather visit a representative figure with plus or minus 2.5 percent margin of error to give us the true result of the entire 14 million voters. Ask every statistician or a researcher and they will tell you that it is possible,� he said. Speaking on Oman FM�s Morning Show, Peter Mac Manu insisted on a reform to give a specific year period to the Electoral Commissioner as it is being practiced in Sierra-Leone and Liberia where the Commissioners have 5 and 6 years respectively to stay office. According to him, these Electoral Commissioners in the aforementioned countries wholeheartedly work because they want to make an impact before leaving office. He however bemoaned the electoral system in Ghana which allows the Commissioner to stay in office till the age of 70. To him this system has given too much liberty and power to the Electoral Commissioner [Dr. Afari Gyan] as he knows nobody can do anything to him. �He knows nobody can do anything to him and these are part of the reforms we are looking forward to seeing at the Electoral Commission. Whatever suggestions we give to EC they don�t take and we have complained severally about the bloated voter�s register but they have not done anything about it,� he bemoaned. He hinted that Dr. Afari Gyan in 2008 set up a committee when NDC complained that Ashanti Region�s register was bloated and representatives from all the political parties including the NDC sat in the committee to investigate the issue. He wondered why Dr. Afari Gyan in a similar complain by NPP as per the directive of the Supreme Court in the 2012 election petition has ignored the directive. �I don�t understand him that at some point in time Ghanaians should help him but when the same Ghanaians offer their opinions, he does not take them�..We don�t work like that in terms of good governance; we should accept views of people who matter in governance. We should rather resolve issues which are possible to create chaos immediately,� he urged.