Dec polls: EC doesn’t know its work - Group

The voter verification and register exhibition exercise as well as the just-ended exercise to re-register deleted National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cardholders, who registered onto the voter roll using the card, did not achieve its purpose, the Forum for Positive Change has said.

With just a few days to the end of the exhibition and verification exercise, the group said a lot of anomalies had been detected.

A statement issued by Mr Adu Poku, president of the Forum for Positive Change, said: “While the exhibition and verification travelled within 21 days, the re-registration travelled within a period of 10 days. In the first place, the re-registration should have travelled along the same period with the exhibition or the registration should have taken place immediately after the exhibition and verification process. This would have offered all deleted individuals to register again.

“But most of those who were deleted could not get re-registered either because of long queues or ‘dumsor dumsor’ (power outages). This has disenfranchised many potential voters. Yet, the re-registration has come to an end. One, therefore, wonders whether it is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise people or, simply put, the EC does not know its work,” the group said.

“We are, therefore, appealing to all well-meaning Ghanaians, especially the National Peace Council, Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Christian Council of Ghana, the Muslim Council, and all civil society organisations, to impress upon the EC to give another window for the re-registration, especially those whose names were deleted for no apparent reason. Many are those who did not use the NHIS [card] for their maiden registration, but yet have their names deleted.

We are of the firm conviction that the EC wanted to just satisfy the Supreme Court, hence these problems.”