Coronavirus: Minority demands election 2020 roadmap from EC

The Electoral Commission of Ghana must inform Ghanaians about its preparedness for the 2020 general elections, Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu has said.

He told journalists on Thursday, April 30, 2020, that the election management body must also provide its roadmap for the elections amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Constitution requires that presidential and parliamentary elections be held this year, even as we struggle with COVID”, the Tamale South MP said, adding: “The independent Electoral Commission created under Article 45 of this Constitution owes this country and Members of Parliament an explanation”.

“They have to be summoned to give us their roadmap as to their preparedness”, he insisted.

The EC, he stressed, needs to “appraise this House on their level of preparedness for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary election”.

“If we cannot get them to brief the Committee of the whole, they have to come to the Special Budget Committee,” Mr Iddrisu noted.

The EC was supposed to have started its registration exercise for a new register of voters on 18 April 2020 but had to suspend it indefinitely as a result of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, which has, so far, killed 17 out of the 2,074 with 212 recoveries.

Last weekend, there was a controversy between the EC and opposition MP Sam Nartey George, who together with some supporters of the NDC, besieged an alleged workshop organised by the election body.