Asiedu Nketia, NDC must school themselves again - John Boadu

Acting General Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu has described as dangerous for the country, the inability of the General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) Johnson Asiedu Nketiah and his party to read.

To him, for Asiedu Nketiah, who is a member of the Electoral Reform Committee that recommended the electronic transmission of electoral results, not to have fully peruse the Committee’s report, buttresses Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia's point that the NDC 'don’t read'.

Speaking on Okay Fm’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, John Boadu, who described Asiedu Nketiah as a ‘busy-body’ averred that he (Asiedu Nketiah) is lying to Ghanaians about the issue which does not even concern the ruling NDC directly.

He stressed that Asiedu Nketiah was part of the Reform Committee that severely criticised the suggestion of the NPP to use satellite means to transmit the election results; when the Electoral Reform Committee realised that transmitting results from the polling stations directly will not be possible due to unstable and unreliable network in some parts of the country.

He mentioned that “the accepted and agreed recommendation of the Electoral Reform Committee which Asiedu Nketiah was part of is that when the results get to the collation centres at the Constituency levels, hand-held scanners should be used to scan all the results and then transmit them electronically to the national collation centre”.

John Boadu, who is also the National Organiser of NPP, further quoted from the Electoral Reform Committee’s recommendation which read “it is further recommended that, hand-held scanners should be used to scan constituency collation forms that contain the polling station results and send electronically and directly to the national collation centre. The hard copies will be sent physically to the head office of the EC”.

“This is what all the political parties at IPAC meeting accepted and agreed on that we should buy scanners for the 275 EC officials at the constituency levels and then scan the results electronically to the national collation centre. This is written in plain language and we all agreed to it,” John Boadu pointed.

Commenting on the concern of the NPP, John Boadu indicated that his party is seeing something different from the agreed recommendation made by the Electoral Reform Committee.

“What we are seeing now is that, it is not what we all agreed to which is being implemented by the EC . . . EC’s advert calling for companies to bid for that contract, the agreement didn’t need any contract. We only need hand-held scanners for the EC officials and not contract for any company to do the scanning. This is what we agreed on.”

“EC is now looking for a company which can transmit the results electronically from all the 29,000 polling stations to the collation centres and then to national collation centre...there has never been any meeting on this new development from EC, whether through Electoral Reform Committee’s recommendation or at IPAC meeting to agree that the results will be scanned from each and every polling station and transmit electronically to the national collation centre,” he emphasised.