EC is broke - Afari Gyan cries out

The Electoral Commission (EC) is cash strapped and this is the main reason for the frequent postponements of the district level elections.

Chairman of the EC, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, made this disclosure during a meeting with the leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region last week.

According to him, but for the financial challenge facing the EC, the district level elections would have been held long ago.

“What you are saying it may incur cost and so on. Now we all know it is very difficult to get money to do anything.

“We have postponed the district level elections. Now we have postponed it to March in 2015,” he lamented.

Dr. Afari-Gyan was responding to a series of suggestions that Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, the Ashanti Regional NPP Chairman, posed regarding the electoral register.

The NPP regional chairman had suggested that all those whose names had been deleted from the electoral register for multiple registration charge should be reinstated.

Nicknamed Wontumi, the NPP guru also insisted that the EC should have a centralized data system which could prevent people from registering twice.

He was of the view that innocent people were being disenfranchised due to administrative weakness by the EC and said that must stop.

Wontumi was of the view that majority of Ghanaians were not happy about the inefficiency of the EC but they don’t have the means to protest.

He said as the regional chairman of the NPP, he was using his position to fight for millions of Ghanaians who are not pleased about the EC’s performance.

The meeting, which was supposed to be peaceful, suddenly turned into war of words between Wontumi and Dr. Afari-Gyan.

The two gentlemen were angry to the extent that other people present had to intervene to avert a possible exchange of blows.

NPP members like Dr. Amoako Tuffuor, Frederick Fredua Anto and Kennedy Kankam were present. EC top members were also there.

The district level elections had been postponed several times by the EC, creating room for speculations.

People that are eyeing assembly member positions are said to be spending more on their campaigns due to the recurrent postponements.