Source: Onuaonline.com
The Director of Training and IT at the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, has said that the Commission has not breached any regulation in releasing the voters’ register to the political parties a day to the exhibition of the roll.
He says the law mandates the EC to make the register available to the political parties three months after the compilation of the register, and producing it within the time frame is not against the regulations.
Speaking on Onua TV’s morning show, Maakye, Tuesday, August 20, 2024, Dr. Quaicoe stated that “we have not violated any rules because we are supposed to give them 3 months after compilation.”
He continued that the political parties had details of the register from 2020 up to the final mop-up the Commission conducted in 2024.
“In 2020, we did a new register and gave them both the provisional and final. In 2023, we did a new one and added it to them and the limited registration we did and completed on May 29, 2024, we gave copies to the parties on a daily basis. We also gave them copies after the mop up,” he disclosed.
He added that the parties also had the opportunity to go to the polling stations to challenge any persons they deemed unqualified to be on the roll.
He noted that his outfit made the copies available to the parties on Monday, August 19, 2024.
This followed several calls by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the EC to release the register to them, so they could crosscheck with the copies they were given earlier.
According to the NDC, the law mandates the Commission to make the roll available before the voter exhibition starts, so they can make copies available to their agents to thoroughly check with the EC’s version.
Also speaking on the show was National Chairman for the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who said the time frame was too short to identify certain errors in the register.
He said the parties should have been served about two weeks prior to the exhibition exercise, so they could scrutinise the document properly, especially when the Commission’s final roll does not tally with what was given the political parties during the registration.
The Electoral Commission is embarking on a voter exhibition exercise starting today, Tuesday, August 20, up to August 27, 2024.
Source: www.onuaonline.com
