Limited registration ends officially

Accra, Aug. 12, GNA - The Limited registration of voters organised by the Electoral Commission (EC) ended officially at 1800 hours on Tuesday after it had been extended for two days to cater for crowds that had swarmed the registration centres and overwhelmed the EC. The exercise was meant to capture those who had turned 18 years and others who did not have their names on the ballot. It is not clear how effective the extension was nationwide as some centres still had queues as at the beginning of the day, especially to take their photographs.

The EC said all those who were in queues at the various centres by 1800 hours should be attended to, but those who come after the deadline would not be served.

The exercise, which started on July 31, was plagued by huge operational challenges including shortage of registration forms and other logistics, slow process, confusion and violence. The EC was overwhelmed the huge crowds, well beyond the 800,000 to one million it had projected to capture. Mr Christian Owusu-Parry, Acting Director of Public Affairs, in a statement on Sunday said the EC extended the limited registration exercise nationwide by two days to enable regional directors of the Commission to arrange to cater for all eligible persons who were still in queues to be registered.

The EC asked regional directors to "mobilise all resources to enable them to cover all such applicants in their respective regions within the two days, ending 6 pm (1800 hours) on Tuesday, 12th August 2008".

The EC also established special registration centres at the Head Office and regional offices of the Commission to cater for the physically challenged within the period. Mr David Adeenze-Kangah, EC Deputy Chairman in-Charge of Finance and Administration, described the huge turnout as an abnormal phenomenon.

"We have never experienced huge inflows of potential voters at the centres to register during limited registration exercise since the inception of the Fourth Republic. Not even during the main exercise has the intensity been almost constant throughout the period," he told the Ghana News Agency in an interview.

The two main political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC), traded accusations about violence, registration of minors and confusion that characterised the exercise.