Elections not won at EC headquarters - Haruna to NPP

The Minister for Employment and Labour Relations Haruna Iddrisu has hit back at pro-New Patriotic Party (NPP) group, Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) and the party for embarking on series of demonstrations in the country to compel the Electoral Commission (EC) to implement what it describes as validation of the country’s electoral register.

Haruna Iddrisu indicates that elections are not won at the EC headquarters through street protests but at the polling station through the sovereign will of the people who vote to determine who will rule them for a four-year term as enshrined in the constitution.

According to him, the NPP and its allied agencies should as a matter of national interest, stop harassing the EC and allow it do its independent work to ensure a credible register is obtained for the 2016 General Elections.

He stated that EC is an independent creation mandated by the constitution and not under the subject to the control of any party not even the President of Ghana.

Speaking in Tamale at the weekend, the Tamale South legislator challenged the NPP and its pro-pressure groupings to prove that the register used in conducting the 2000 and 2004 general elections is more credible than what is currently being used.

“I will like to remind the NPP that the register of 2000 and 2004 cannot be better that the register for today and the one for the 2016 general elections. There has been much improvement since 2000 in our electoral registers which marks improvement in its credibility”, he observed

He called on the NPP to partner various stakeholders in improving on the credibility of the register through the reduction of multiple registrations, registration of minors and foreigners which have bedeviled the register since 1993; he said is the negative undoing of voters register history in Ghana.

“They should let us collectively work towards eliminating that to make it credible because they are themselves guilty of some of electoral malpractices when it comes to the compilation of the register”, he said.