Voters Roll: NPP boycott won’t affect EC panel – Ephson

Renowned Pollster Ben Ephson has stated that the work of the five-member panel set up by the Electoral Commission on the voters register would not be affected if the New Patriotic Party decides to boycott the panel.

A member of the NPP Gabby Asare Otchere Darko has called on the party to boycott this week’s EC public forum ostensibly to openly discuss the merits or otherwise of the case for a new electoral register.

Pro-NPP pressure group Let My Vote Count Alliance has also described some members of the panel as bias and NDC members.

The five-member body was set up by the EC to receive petitions and calls from some political parties, civil society groups and a number of Ghanaians for a new voters’ register.

The hearings will take place on Thursday and Friday, the 29th and 30th of October, 2015 at Alisa Hotel, North Ridge, Accra from 10:00hrs to 13:00hrs and 14:00hrs to 17:00hrs daily.

Speaking on Starr Midday News Monday, the Editor of the Dispatch Newspaper said the NPP has the right to boycott the panel but the decision won’t affect the work of the EC.

“If we want to reduce everything to somebody’s long distance relationship or being a member of a political party nothing would get done. So I believe that if they don’t want to participate, it is their right but that cannot stop the EC from doing its job,” Ephson told Kwaku Obeng-Adjei.

He added “they have a choice to state their view and they have a choice to stay away.”

The Panel is made up of His Lordship Professor V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, Co-Chair of the Coalition for Domestic Election Observers, (CODEO), former Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana, former Professor of Law, and former Electoral Commissioner of Ghana; Most Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante, former Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana and Chairman of the National Peace Council.

The rest are Dr. Grace Bediako, a former Government Statistician and former member of the National Development Planning Commission; Dr. Nii Narku Quaynor, a renowned computer scientist, Chairman of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) Board of Directors, and President of the Internet Society of Ghana; and Maulvi Bin Salih, Ameer of the Ahmadiyya Mission of Ghana.