Limited Voter Registration: NDC cries foul

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said reports from its field officers monitoring the limited registration exercise being undertaken by the Electoral Commission (EC) in selected districts within the four regions that will be affected by an impending referendum, indicate that there are “serious infractions of the rules, coupled with other organisational lapses which are threatening to compromise the quality of the exercise”.

This was contained in a press release issued by General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, on Monday, 17 September 2018.

The statement said: “To ensure that the EC’s registration officers do not, on their own, enter any additional names outside working hours, paragraph 2.3 of EC’s own training manual requires the ‘Printing of Daily Accounting and Statistical Information (Activity Report)’, which would be verified by our party agents”.

However, the party pointed out that: “Unfortunately, this was not done before the beginning of registration nor at the close of the exercise yesterday”.

The release explained that agents of the NDC could not verify whether or not names had been entered in the register before the commencement of the exercise.

In the same vein, the party said it could not ascertain that the record of names that had been captured as of the close of day yesterday (Sunday, 16 September), remain the same at the beginning of work today (Monday, 17 September).

The party said its second concern is that the EC should have known that the areas affected by the registration are experiencing rains.

“The resulting flooding has cut several communities from their district centres where the registration is taking place.

“The NDC is, therefore, calling for special arrangements to be put in place to handle such situations to ensure that these potential voters are not disenfranchised through no fault of theirs,” the release stressed.

“We also demand the issuance of the daily activity report from the EC officials to our agents in the registration centres to avoid any further controversies at the centres,” the statement reiterated.

Source: otecfmghana.com