LMVCA issues ultimatum to EC

The Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) is outraged by the apparent determination of the Charlotte Osei-led Electoral Commission to impair our democratic system. The EC's reckless decisions are setting up the nation for chaos in the November 2016 general elections.

The EC’s posture and timetable make clear that it does not intend to carry out records validation for registered voters, despite being encouraged to do so by its own Panel of Experts, and even by the Supreme Court.

We wish, by this statement, to inform the public that LMVCA accepts the recommendation from the Panel Report that Validation is good enough, if done well, to clean up the register and give us a credible base document for the 2016 elections. The challenge now is that the EC appears determined to deny Ghanaian this important exercise recommended by its own panel of experts.

We are, by this statement, demanding from the EC a clear timetable for validation to clean up the register and this must be made known to the public within a week from today, failing which we will mobilise the youth of this country to stage a massive demonstration against the Commission.

In the 77-page report of the Panel of Experts, set up by the EC to provide guidance on the electoral register issue, Justice VCRAC Crabbe and his team asserted that the voter register is bloated, and that Ghana cannot go into the 2016 general elections without addressing its widespread irregularities.

Shockingly, the Panel discovered that the number of names on the voter register is “dangerously” and unacceptably more than the total number of eligible voters in Ghana. The Panel implored the EC to validate registered voters, but the EC, incredulously, is refusing to do so.

In our current circumstances, a validation exercise becomes the only possible means to give the nation a clean register that will enable credible elections with an outcome that will be readily accepted by all.

Enough is enough.

Let it be reiterated, the Let My Vote Count Alliance is giving the EC a one-week ultimatum to tell the people of Ghana when and how it will conduct the validation exercise to deliver a credible register to the citizens. If the EC exceeds its one-week ultimatum, we will take action. And this time around, the demonstrations we stage will be bigger and stronger, and no amount of intimidation from the police or the anti-democracy thugs will deter us. We have both the outrage and the inflamed determination of the nation behind us.

All across Ghana, the people no longer have faith in the authorities to conduct an honest election.

Ms. Osei and the EC's ongoing refusal to clean the voter register is a refusal to conduct a free and fair election in Ghana.

It should also be noted that it would be a waste of money and time to conduct limited registration and then to do the validation afterward. The EC must conduct the validation in tandem with the limited registration they plan to carry out. It would be neither effective nor efficient to waste the Ghanaian people's money and time by conducting these exercises separately. This issue requires urgent attention and clarity from the EC.

The people of Ghana will not let Charlotte Osei and the EC rob us of an honest election. They must be held accountable.

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Signed

David Asante

Convener LMVCA