The Electoral Commission has denied claims by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) which suggested the EC is deliberately removing names of NDC members from the voters’ register.
In the wake of the allegations, flagbearer of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama and his running mate, Prof Jane Naana Agyemang called off their various campaign tours to deal with the issue.
However, the EC in a statement described the allegations as ‘unfounded’ and false’.
“The Commission has, from the beginning of the compilation of the Voters Register, lived up to its motto: Fairness, Transparency and Accountability. Indeed, at every point, we have provided factual, accurate and evidence-based information to our Stakeholders on voter statistics per region, district, gender, age among others. To date, every interested Ghanaian has information on the number of persons who registered in the just concluded Voter Registration Exercise based on the information we provided. It is a paradox, therefore, to suggest that the same Commission now seeks to remove persons from the Voters Register. Had that been the agenda of the Commission, it would not have given detailed information to Stakeholders throughout the Registration process,” the statement said.
The statement stressed: “We assure the General Public that these allegations are unfounded. For the information of the Public, the Exhibition of the Provisional Voters Register has been provided for in the Law (CI 91). The Law, recognising that a registration process is not full proof, has provided a mechanism called “Exhibition” to allow citizens to verify their details to ensure that they are captured in the register or that their details such as sex, age, name etc. are accurate. The Exhibition also affords Voters the opportunity to correct any errors detected. Additionally, the Law provides for “inclusion” to allow persons who registered but whose names are not on the register, to file to be included in the register. This process is not new and has always formed part of our processes.
“In a nutshell, the Exhibition Exercise provides an opportunity to Stakeholders to unearth problems with the Register for the purpose of fixing it. This is exactly what the Electoral Commission is doing. We are fixing the issues unearthed. We assure the Public that the Commission is working to ensure that the margin of error with the Voters Register is negligible”.
Source: GhanaFeed.com