“I grieve for Dr. Bawumia because it is obvious he does not understand the electoral process of the country; the embarrassment is too much on him,” said the deputy General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress [NDC], Koku Anyidoho, after Dr. Bawumia, NPP’s 2016 Presidential running mate revealed some people in Ghana’s voters register are Togolese.
Between 2008 and 2012, available data shows that there has been an unusual increase in the voters register in several constituencies, the New Patriotic Party has alleged.
The said growth is one that defies logic and this is one thing that concerns Dr. Bawumia.
“One cannot credibly explain for example how increases in the voters register of magnitudes exceeding 40% can take place. Where did the people come from?” “...quite a large number of the constituencies with unusual increases in the voters register are those from neighboring countries. Take the Western region for example, where notwithstanding the oil find, Sekondi and Takoradi saw a 5% decrease in registered voters while Suaman and Nzema East saw increases in the voters register by 23% and 27.7% respectively,” he claimed.
Using facial biometric recognition technology, the NPP’s investigation team fished out 76,286 voters with the same names and faces on the Ghanaian and Togolese voters registers. This was made known by the party’s vice presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as he illustrated in a power point presentation.
Commenting on the findings, Koku Anyidoho on Okay FM said the exercise carried out by Dr. Bawumia is embarrassing, and exposes his ignorance of the country’s electoral process.
To him, Dr. Bawumia’s ignorance of the electoral process has always been used by his Flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, to coerce him to come out with concocted figures which is obscured to win public sympathy.
He again averred that Dr. Bawumia’s embarrassment in the press conference is similar to the slur he cast upon himself when he was misled to lead the NPP’s 2012 election petition at the Supreme Court.
“I grieve for Dr. Bawumia because it is obvious he does not understand the electoral process of the country and so when they deceive him to hold a press conference, then he quickly come out to do it. It was similar situation he embarrassed himself at the Supreme Court when they petitioned the court for a reverse in the 2012 election results; they are only pushing him to come out to embarrass himself the more…that is why I am saying he is embarrassing himself and I think somebody should advice him to stop it,” he asserted.
He wondered why Nana Akufo-Addo did not hold the press conference to do the power point presentation; reminding the opposition that laws cannot be passed in retrospect as it wants to scrap the current voters register because of the Supreme Court ruling against the use of NHIS cards for voters registration.
He however was convinced that the presentation by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia was meant to create the impression that the voters register is bloated in NDC strongholds; indicating it is disingenuous and gross dishonesty for the NPP to fail to highlight in its presentation areas in its strongholds which have bloated voters register.