EC clears air on parties' involvement in voter registration

Accra, Feb. 16, GNA - Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), on Monday said the EC would not engage the services of party-sponsored candidates for the voters' registration exercise scheduled for March 16 to 29, this year.

He said people should also desist from the practice of putting pressure on EC officials to engage relatives as registration officials during the exercise.

Speaking at a day's workshop to sensitise political parties and the media on the forthcoming registration exercise, Dr. Afari-Gyan said District Chief Executives (DCEs), candidates and political parties were often guilty of putting pressure on the EC to engage the services of their people as registration officials.

The workshop was organised by the EC for over 50 participants on the replacement of the voters' register.

According to Dr. Afari-Gyan, 84,000 officials would be engaged for the exercise in the 21,000 polling stations and only qualified people will be engaged.

He said, "unless the unforeseen happens, there would be no extension of the registration of voters." He warned political parties not to use flimsy excuses to ask for an extension.

Touching on some problems, Dr. Afari-Gyan said the voters' registration exercise was more costly than the actual elections. He said 113 billion cedis was needed for the registration and a little over 99 billion cedis for the general elections.

"The ideal thing is for us to have 21,000 cameras for the 21,000 polling stations". "Unfortunately we have only 2,000 cameras for 21,000 polling stations to take the pictures of the voters."

Dr. Afari-Gyan said with the exception of the Upper West and Upper East Regions which would enjoy both the registration and the taking of pictures at the same time, all other regions would have photographs of voters taken at other dates when the camera moved from the Northern Regions where the registration exercise would start from. He said: "Our peculiar environment" was one key reason for the huge resources needed for elections.

According to Dr. Afari-Gyan, because of the registration of minors, impersonation and multiple registration, there was the need to go in for indelible ink, transparent ballot box and other expensive and elaborate programmes to ensure free and fair elections.

Dr. Afari-Gyan said he has witnessed the holding of elections in Britain, Canada and the United States and it was a simple affair without the use of various materials such as indelible ink since the voters always did what was right.

Mr Isaac Boateng, Director of Finance at the EC urged political parties to encourage the disabled to come out in their numbers to vote since every provision would be made available to assist them.