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NDC Raises Issues With Voters Register Exhibition

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has raised red flags with the ongoing voter register exhibition exercise.According to the party, there were flaws in the exercise which commenced on Monday, September 10, 2019 and was expected to end on Tuesday, September 17, 2019.

The party said the exercise was frustrating prospective and registered voters across the country.

Violation

It further described the exercise as “a gross violation of the Public Election Regulations (Voter Registration) Constitutional Instrument 91 (C.I 91) as a result of the EC’s own planning, development and operations of the exhibition exercise”.

The party averred that based on the provisions in the C.I 91, the EC was supposed to provide a provisional register of voters alongside the old registers that were compiled since 2012 for voters to check out their details in the registers.

Those registers, it said, ought to indicate the names, age, sex, residential address and the photograph of each person whose application for registration was accepted at a registration centre.

Names not found

At a press conference held by the party yesterday, the Director of Elections of the NDC, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, said lots of newly registered names could not be found in the register while others had had their names deleted.

He cited Kpone Katamanso in the Greater Accra Region, areas in the Oti and Eastern regions and other parts of the country as an example, stressing that “the exercise could not happen at Nkwanta North, Nkwanta South, Krachi Nchumuru and Krachi East.

The EC officials assigned to those areas, he said, attributed the development to “the late arrival of materials. At Krachi West, work commenced in the late hours of the day”.

Refusal to provide copies of register

The party also alleged that the commission was refusing to give copies of the voters register to them after several correspondence.

Mr Afriyie Ankrah said the challenge forms filed against some registered voters since 2016 were still pending, adding that instead of the 2019 register being separated from the old one, the two had been combined with names mixed up.

“The threat of having many voters disenfranchised through no fault of theirs is real and imminent as a result of the EC’s deliberate, clumsy way of conducting this exercise.”

The NDC further accused the EC of exhibiting unprofessionalism during the exercise. “We wish to caution and advise the EC to adopt some level of professionalism in their work during this exhibition exercise. What the EC has offered so far looks amateurish, unprofessional and untidy,” it said.

The party, therefore, urged the EC, headed by Mrs Jean Mensa, to take immediate remedial action and salvage the situation before it got worse.

Source: Daily Graphic

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