Charlotte Osei, EC Chair
Some Ghanaian residents in the United Kingdom have embarked on a massive demonstration in London aimed at piling pressure on the Electoral Commission (EC) to prepare a new Biometric Voters’ Register.
They ended the demonstration at the No 10, Downing Street, Westminster, where UK Prime Minister David Cameron lives on, and presented a petition to the British leader.
A news statement issued in London by organisers said apart from Prime Minister David Cameron’s office, they sent similar letters to the British Parliament, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the United Nations UK representative, the European Union, the German Chancellor through the German Ambassador in the UK, the Pope through the Vatican Pronuncio, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and several European governments through their Embassies.
According to the organisers, they also presented exhibits of images of multiple Ghanaian registrants, cross-border registrants of mainly Togolese nationals, a few of Burkina and Ivorian nationalities, as well as images of police brutalities recently visited on peaceful demonstrators against the existing flawed register in Accra.
The demonstrators, the release said, held placards, some of which read: Election 2016 Under Threat; Ghana Elections Is for Ghanaians; New Voters Register Now; NDC and EC in Bed; There Will Not Be Another Court Case; and No Fair Elections No Peace among others.
They were particularly incensed by new EC Chairperson Charlotte Osei’s claim that Ghana’s security might be threatened by any move to compile a new register and wondered if the EC was now a security intelligence agency.
The petition, signed by Kwaku Abrefa Damoa, said “We are concerned Ghanaians living in the United Kingdom, and we do hereby seek your indulgence, and the support of your government, in acting in solidarity with our compatriots in Ghana, who have stood up against the use of a flawed voters’ register in the December 2016 General and Presidential elections.”
“We are dismayed with happenings and mishappenings currently underscoring our Ghanaian democracy. We sense and feel serious mischievous simmering forebodings, currently in zygote stage of development, that if not earlier dealt with, can result in internecine carnage in Ghana within the next 12 months, and which requires immediate attention from our international partners and development communities, whom we trust are in a better position to forefend it,” they added.
The statement further said: “Our concerns have all been outlined in detail in an attached preamble, followed by our request in the form of a petition. Attached with our petition are sample exhibits of double and multiple registration which have been discovered in tens of thousands, cross-border registrants from neighbouring Togo, Burkina and the Ivory Coast, also in several hundred thousands, who are transported or allowed into Ghana by the ruling National Democratic Congress party as ‘voting mercenaries’ during general elections to vote for them, and also Ghana police brutalities on peaceful demonstrators against the flawed register.”
The concerned Ghanaians said they wanted the UK Premier to use his “high-powered international influence and authority to directly intervene to forestall any future bloody conflict,” and also “support the position that calls for a new, credible, and transparent voters’ register in Ghana.”
They also want the international community “to support the people of Ghana in seeking justice in our electoral processes, and ultimately lasting peace and stability, by not necessarily maintaining the current voters’ register as this may backfire in future into mayhem.”
