It's in Ghana’s interest to check bloated register – Konadu

Former first lady and founder of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings has declared her party’s position on Ghana’s voters register adding that it is “bloated and should be cleaned up.”

According to her “it would serve the interest of Ghana and Ghanaians if the voters register is revisited and we all re-register and weed out ghost names, foreign names and all that, see the real potential of the Ghanaian voter and let them vote for who they want.

“I think it is in our interest as a nation to do that because to pretend that we don’t know that it’s bloated and all that… it think it’s a farce.”

Nana Konadu’s comments come on the back of similar calls by some political parties especially the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that the Electoral Commission should check the voters register and clean it up ahead of the 2016 general elections.

The NPP also indicated that lots of foreign names have infiltrated the voters register and called for a collective effort to ensure that the register is sanitized before next year’s general elections.

Addressing the media over similar concerns, Nana Konadu said “as much as our party, the NDP says that the voters register should be cleaned up, we also believe that if it is done well, Ghana can have a quick step ahead of the rest of West Africa and maybe we should also be looking at electronic voting after we’ve re-registered.”

“That should be the next move. Then you go to the box, you put your hand on the machine where you want to vote, no human being would be counting to add anything to any figure. It would be clear to us as a people then we know who has won,” she added.

The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has raised opposition over the claims of the NPP adding that the latter is crying wolf when there is no need to. They contend that the NPP is still wallowing in the 2012 defeat to President John Mahama.

Nana Konadu says “we believe that the voters register must be look at again, we should revisit it and have a new voters register so that it would be clean, no pink sheet issue etc.”