EC’s attitude on publicity campaigns worrying – CODEO

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has expressed misgivings about the Electoral Commission’s seeming unpreparedness towards the crucial November polls.

Albert Arhin, National Coordinator for CODEO said the EC’s attitude leaves much to be desired in relation to its planned campaigns ahead of the election.

He told Accra-based Citi FM in an interview that he was disappointed that the EC, few weeks to the limited registration is yet to roll-out any publicity campaign on the important exercise.

“My concern is the urgency with which they tackle some of the issues. You’re going to have a limited registration, and to date I’m not sure I’ve seen any poster outside, indicating that people should come out on the 28th April, and register, neither have I heard on air a jingle or something talking about the registration exercise. I think it’s not good enough.

“We have some few weeks to the registration, and there is nothing about it. I will think that they put some urgency to the things that they do, and expedite action so as to bring everybody along with them so we achieve the target”

The Electoral Commission says it will open the voters register for limited registration from April 28 to May 8, 2016.

This is to enable new voters who have attained age 18 and those who qualify but were unable to register in previous election year, to take advantage of it to do so.

The commission initially planned to do the registration in March 2016 but since the Constitutional Instrument (CI), which is to regulate the registration has been laid in Parliament, was yet to mature, it has decided to postpone it to April.