Filing forms with provisional register bad, never happened before – Mahama

Former President John Dramani Mahama has criticized the Electoral Commission (EC) for receiving nomination forms of presidential and parliamentary candidates with a provisional voters register ahead of the December 7 elections.

Mr Mahama said it has never happened before in the history of the Fourth Republic that presidential and parliamentary candidates filed their nominations forms using an uncertified electoral roll.

This he said indicates that the Jean Mensa-led EC has done a poor job ahead of the elections.

Speaking in a meeting with European Union (EU) Ambassadors on Monday, November 2, the Presidential Candidate of the NDC said: “This election is critical for consolidating Ghana’s democracy and then also moving Ghana to the next level especially after a year of this very serious pandemic that Ghana is affected. We will like to thank you for your usual attention to Ghana.”

He added: “A lot of things have been happening especially in the lead-up to the elections. If you look at the continent because of Covid everybody is looking inward. In our country, we have a problem with the Electoral Commission.

“There have been incidents leading up to the elections that create a certain anxiety about whether the election is going to be transparent, free and fair and whether it is going to be devoid of any chaos or disorder. We want you to take note of it.

“The Commission has failed to follow due process. In some cases, legal provisions they have failed to follow it.

“In other cases they introduced new things into the electoral process too late and too close to an election and we are beginning to suffer the results of that. Late registration of voters has led to late exhibition, omission of names, it gives us very little time to correct before we go into the election.

“They announced that they have taken our 30,000 names out of the register they haven’t published the names and so we do not know whose names have been taken off. People are going to get there Election Day and they say your name is not on the register. There might be a genuine why they should be in the register but we have not been told who those people are and why their names have been taken off.

“A lot of things have gone wrong. We have filed nominations with a provisional register. It has never happened before in this country where you filed nominations for presidential and parliamentary using [provisional register.”