Voter registration: 'It’s total chaos, EC has lost control' over coronavirus protocols – NDC

The Director of Elections of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said the Electoral Commission has lost control as far as observing COVID-19 protocols at the voter registration centres is concerned.

“There has been total chaos”, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah observed during a press conference of the biggest opposition party on Wednesday, 8 July 2020.

“Ghanaians will recall that one of the major concerns of the NDC, CSOs and medical superintendents, and health workers, lecturers and ordinary Ghanaians raised about the compilation of the new voters’ register was the risk of exposing Ghanaians to the further spread of the novel coronavirus. Our predictions were right”, he said.

According to him, “Despite the assurances by the Electoral Commission that they will ensure the observance of COVID-19 safety protocols, they have lost total control over the process”.

“From the beginning of the exercise, we have witnessed complete disregard for COVID-19 protocols”, he claimed.

“While we observe that the wearing of face mask is being strictly enforced, upon entry at the registration centre, social-distancing and washing of hands are not been observed”, he said.

Mr Afriyie Ankrah also condemned the EC for, according to him, willy-nilly changing the registration centres.

“The EC has been inconsistent in following its own schedules for the ongoing voter registration”, he said, noting: “The schedules that were published to the general public have been changed on the grounds, resulting in a lot of confusion, which is adversely affecting the registration exercise”.

“It is not for fun that the schedules were published in a gazette, which is a legal document that states areas where the registration will be taking place.”

“So, you publish your schedules in a gazette and subsequently, you start varying the plan and making people move from one place to another to register only to get there and the ground on the schedule has changed and there are legal issues and we are speaking to our lawyers about that but beyond that, it creates a lot of inconvenience and uncertainty and people don’t know what is going on.”