By Margaret Jackson
February 11, 2013
I have been vilified by the NPP folks who know next to nothing about how the voter registration exercise was done and how the 2012 voting were conducted by the Electoral Commission (EC). When I stated boldly that no Ghanaian voted abroad in the 2012 Elections, it sounded alien to many NPP people who do not seem to understand what I was talking about.
I have therefore, decided to devote sometime and explain to Ghanaians what I know about some of the voting numbers being flown around, so that we would all be better informed about what is going on.
The simple reason is that many people have just blocked their ears to anything that will make sense to them, thus leading them to make pronouncements that are more confusing than anything else.
I did mention in my last article that out of the Ghanaian diplomats abroad, the EC was able to register 711 of them for the 2012 Elections. But I would like everybody to listen very clearly to what I am going to say next. In the course of the registration exercise of the Ghanaian diplomats, the EC never used any overseas address of any Ghanaian registered.
What the EC did was purely simple, and which has been done in the past. For instance when they went to Washington DC, in the USA to register the Ghanaian diplomats, all those registered there were required to provide their addresses in Ghana, their polling stations and their constituencies and regions. This was done so that if any of them comes down to Ghana to vote he/she will know exactly which polling station to go and vote. It was also to facilitate those who wanted to vote by proxy due to their inability to come down to Ghana to vote.
Therefore, the misinformation currently going round that hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians were registered abroad and actually voted in the 2012 Elections will not wash. And if the NPP folks do not purge themselves of this falsehood, they will drown in this falsehood when the truth is laid bare before the Supreme Court.
There is another ‘magic’ figure currently making rounds in the country. The number is the 241,000 people that the NPP folks strongly believe voted outside the country. Before I proceed, I will urge those still holding on to this false believe to take a deep breath and throw out this mendacity since it will give them unnecessary pains when holes are punched into this fabrication.
It is very true that the EC has a list of 241,000 voters, but they are definitely not voters from abroad and they did not vote abroad. Do you remember that after the EC had conducted the registration exercise, it did announce that it was going to conduct a mop-up registration to capture those who were originally left out in the first registration?
The EC did indeed conduct the mop-up registration and those captured were Ghanaians on Peace Keeping duties, students on government scholarships, prisoners, and residents of Akuse. The 241,000 people also involved those in other parts of the country who missed out the first registration exercise. In case you have forgotten, the EC did not register the people of Akuse in the first registration due to an injunction by the Supreme Court.
And I strongly believe that Ghanaians especially the NPP folks have not forgotten that the EC explained thoroughly that due to the nature of the registration of the 241,000 people, they have been placed under a special register. But quite strangely, the NPP people are making mountains out of nothing and pretending as if they are hearing about this number for the first time. I wish after painfully explaining this, they will better understand the situation and rather concentrate on how to provide better and several particulars from the 11,916 polling stations to back their claims at the Supreme Court.
Just making mountains out of nothing is not going to help them out. And it is dangerous for the NPP to continue to keep their supporters in the dark. This attitude of theirs is not going to help them out in anyway. Please keep discussing this until you hear from me again!
magjackson80@yahoo.com http://majjacks80.blogspot.com
