General Secretary of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has described the activities, particularly the limited voters' registration exercise of the Jean Mensa-led Electoral Commission (EC) as a 'guesswork'.
He explained that the Electoral Commission (EC) in this limited voters' registration exercise has been giving Ghanaians conflicting estimated population for the exercise, as its earlier targeted population of 300,000 moved to 500,000 people and now announcing to register 700,000 targeted people.
“You heard recently at the conference of the EC that the limited registration will cater for 700,000 people and that will be the third time that the EC has told Ghanaians its target for the limited registration, and each target is different,” he indicated.
He reiterated that the recent pronouncement of the Electoral Commission (EC) to register about 700,000 people in the limited registration exercise has vindicated the NDC; thus “we said the Electoral Commission is doing guess-work. For 27 years of building democratic institution in Ghana and now, this day and age, guess-work is what Electoral Commission is doing with the electoral process”.
He therefore wondered the impediment on the way of the Electoral Commission (EC) not being able to comply with the actual 1.7 million target population established by the Ghana Statistical Service which the constitution enjoins the EC to work with.
“What at all is preventing the EC from planning to register 1.7 million people which the constitution enjoins the EC to register? And so now it has gotten to a point where we all sit unconcerned and EC is taking democracy to the slaughter house to be killed,” he asserted.
He however told the EC to go back to the drawing board to do the right thing as it is not too late to use the machines which taxpayers’ money was used to purchase to register every eligible Ghanaian who qualifies.
“If the EC has now realised that, the DVR equipments which were used to register people in all the various electoral areas can be used to do this limited registration exercise, then with the 7,000 DVR machines lying down, the EC should open all the electoral areas so that the exercise will be successful in order to avoid the hustle people have to go through, travelling a long distance to register their names,” the NDC Chief Scribe said on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show.
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