NPP, NDC rally supporters to get involved in registration exercise

Ashanti Regional Executives of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), have rallied their supporters to patronize the ongoing voter registration exercise.

The parties said it was important that the supporters trooped to the registration centres in their numbers to register in order to exercise their franchise in the December 7 elections.

“Our positive response to the exercise is critical to retaining the ruling NPP in power,” Mr. Kwasi Kyei Danso, the Regional Communications Director of the Party, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Kumasi.

Democracy, he said, was about numbers, stressing that NPP supporters had no reason to stay at home while the Electoral Commission (EC) conducts the exercise, meant to compile a new register for the upcoming elections.

Mr. Kyei Danso said the party was satisfied with how registration had gone peacefully in the course of the first phase of the exercise, explaining that the general conduct of the EC officials and security personnel was commendable.

The GNA gathered that as at the time of filing this report, at the end of the first phase of the registration in the Region coming to a close, a total of 364, 756 people had been registered, with 53.9 percent being female and 46.1 percent being male.

Of the total registrants, 72.3 per cent went through the processes using the Ghana Card, while 1.7 per cent registered with passports and 26 per cent relying on guarantors to facilitate their registration.

Reacting to the ongoing exercise, the NDC Regional Chairman, Nana Akwasi Andrews, reminded their supporters of the need not to be left out of the registration.

They should take their destiny into their own hands as the party prepares to win the elections massively, he said.

He expressed concern over what he described as “the high presence of security personnel in strongholds of the party in the Region”, citing Asawasi and Drobonso.

“Most people feel intimidated with this development,” he said, and asked the authorities to look at this trend carefully since the nation was not at war.