EC, parties agreed to do continuous registration only so why a new register? – Ofosu-Ampofo

The Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), of betraying an agreement signed by all the political parties with the election management body, to do only continuous registration of eligible voters after the 2016 elections instead of discarding the 2012 voter roll for a totally new one.

“It was agreed by the EC and the various political parties, including the NDC and NPP, that we will be doing continuous registration and no more mass registration”, Mr Ofosu-Ampofo told Kwabena Bobie Ansah on The Citizen Show on Accra100.5FM on Thursday, 11 June 2020.

“All the political parties, in fact, I was part of that meeting, agreed that the EC should open its doors for eligible voters who have turned 18 years and above, to walk freely into their offices to register on every last Friday of every month of the year”, he recalled.

“It was agreed that the EC will open its doors from 7 am to 5 pm on those Fridays”, Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said, adding: “The political parties were to send their representatives to those EC offices to monitor the process”.

“After each monthly registration exercise, the EC would furnish the political parties with the provisional list to deal with any challenges that may have come up before the subsequent month’s exercise was done. So, this year, we were supposed to have had 12 continuous registration exercises because it was meant for every last Friday of every month”, the NDC Chair note.

According to him, “We all agreed at the time that since the 2016 election was just around the corner, we would start the continuous registration from January 2017”.

The NDC and some other opposition parties and civil society groups, have kicked against the EC’s plan to start compiling a new voter roll by the end of June ahead of the December 2020 polls.

They have cited constraints bordering on funds, time, logistics and the COVID-19 pandemic to argue their case.

The NDC even dragged the EC to the Supreme Court challenging its constitutional mandate to compile a new register. The party, however, dropped that relief on Thursday, 11 June 2020 and decided to focus on its second relief, which has to do with the exclusion of the use of the old voter ID card as a breeder document for the forthcoming registration exercise.

In his interview with Bobie Ansah, Mr Ofosu-Ampofo explained: “The reason the NDC is opposed to this new registration exercise is that, we all, including the NPP, signed an agreement that we would be doing continuous registration only and won’t throw away the 2012 register because it is credible, it is biometric – and it is difficult manipulating a biometric document”.

“So, we agreed that never will we, as a country, do a totally new voter register again”, he insisted, adding: “The NPP was represented at that meeting by Mr Mac Manu and we all agreed to do continuous registration”.

“There are documents proving that we all signed onto the new system”, he noted. “The CDD, Mr Kwesi Jonah of IDEG, and the IEA were all at that meeting”.