National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah, has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of hatching plans to benefit the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2020 polls.
Mr Mornah believes the EC is scheming to execute the plan using the proposed new voter roll to be compiled less than a year to the 2020 presidential and parliamentary polls.
The EC requested and parliament approved about GH¢444 million for the compilation of a new voters’ register for the 2020 polls.
The current register was compiled in 2012 and was used for the last two general and parliamentary polls in Ghana. The same register was also used for the referendum to create new regions as well as the local government polls to elect heads of the various assemblies and unit committee members.
According to Mr Mornah, political parties in the country will utilize the months from now to the elections to plan and canvass in order to win votes at the December polls.
But the “EC now wants to take away the political party’s time and make it their time so we will not get the opportunity to go out there to campaign because we should be interested in monitoring the exercise of what they are doing and not our campaigns”.
“If we don’t do our campaigns the government of the day has won the election again. That is, in my opinion, the reason why the Electoral Commission wants to divert our attention…,” he observed at a forum organised by the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) for Good Governance in Accra on Thursday.
He is strongly convinced that “the EC is planning something sinister”.
He said the proposed firms shortlisted for the new register job are not Ghanaians so the data captured cannot be guaranteed to remain secure by the EC.
He claims the EC vouched for the credibility of the voter roll during the December referendum to create new regions and during the district assembly elections hence he the sudden U-turn by the puzzling.
In addition, he said the Coalition for Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) had given a positive review after the elections means a new voters register will not be necessary for the 2020 polls.
“Just this December, we went to the polls and in that elections over 6000 assembly members were elected and according to CODEO the machines functioned 98.8%, there were no difficulties”.
He, therefore, finds it unjustified for the EC to continually seek reasons to back a new register.
Source: theghanareport.com
