EC's reason for new voters’ register 'meaningless' - Asiedu Nketia

General Secretary for the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia says the Electoral Commission (EC) led by Jean Mensa is engaging in propaganda with its call for a new voters’ register for the 2020 General Elections.

According to him, the Electoral Commission (EC) has not been able to come up with a strong reason to convince the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the need to compile a new voters’ register.

Speaking on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the NDC Chief Scribe said the EC officials are not clear with their explanations as to the need for the new voters’ register but rather beating about the bush.

“We want Ghanaians to understand that the reason for which the EC wants to compile a new voters’ register is not a reason which makes sense. It is as if the EC is doing propaganda; they will say something today and then later say something different, and so the actual reason for the new voters’ register is not clear. No one knows the reason behind the call for the new register,” he claimed.

He explained that when the NPP brought the biometric voters’ register suggestion, the NDC at the initial stage rejected it until the Institute of Economic Affair (IEA) led by Madam Jean Mensa in a series of meetings convinced them it was a good idea.

“ . . .we kicked against it because the suggestion was engineered by NPP’s Danquah Institute and so we asked for time to assess the suggestion . . . after a series of meetings led by IEA, we understood that the biometric will solve the problem and it was left with the EC to accept the biometric proposal,” he explained.

He added that all the political parties accepted to go biometric after Dr Afari Gyan, the former EC boss accepted the biometric proposal and instructed all the political parties to bring their IT specialists to work on the proposal which would do away with the periodic change of voters’ register every 10 years.

“It is not possible that there will be no ghost name in the voters’ register, but with the biometric voters’ register even if ghost names increase, nobody can use anybody’s name to vote in any election. We had a solution in 2012 to deal with the problem of changing the voters’ register every 10 years when we all agreed to use biometric voters’ register,” he argued.

He said all parties agreed that the biometric register should be the permanent register, and the Supreme Court later gave a ruling that the periodic change of voters’ register infringes on human rights.