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General News of Friday, 13 September 2019

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

Ghanaians will resist any attempt to manipulate electoral system with our blood - NDC tells EC

NDC Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah play videoNDC Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah

The main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress has warned the Electoral Commission not to attempt to manipulate the nation’s electoral system as the citizenry will resist any such attempt.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, the party’s Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah said the Electoral Commission’s posture towards the voters' register is questionable.

He said the EC refused to give the NDC a copy of the register upon request but went ahead to give a copy to a national security operative adding that the names of over 25,000 people who have registered in the recent registration exercise cannot be found in the register

Mr Afriyie Ankrah further questioned why the Electoral Commission outsourced the printing of the electoral register without the knowledge of any political party when that has not been the norm over the years.

“…any printing of ballot papers or any material that is going out the political parties are involved in we send people right from day one to monitor and check the entire process so that nothing funny happens. How come that in this particular instance they gave it to an outside agency, they did not inform the political parties, the political parties were not involved in monitoring and that is why we are having these delays,” he stated.

The NDC used the opportunity to remind the EC that the credibility of every electoral system is based on the credibility of the register and as such they should have been more cautious to ensure that the information did not fall into the hands of wrong people.

“Why should they go and give it to one printing press and we don’t know about it. What if that data got into somebody’s hands and he manipulates the data.”

Mr Afriyie Ankrah warned that Ghanaians will not sit idle and watch the Commission and other people tamper with the 2020 election process.

“We’re telling them that Ghana is not other countries. If they think that they can be manipulated and influenced as it happened in other countries then they must be ready for what is coming. This is Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana… at any given time the will of the people of Ghana cannot be suppressed, there is no man or woman or devil that can stop the will of the people of Ghana.”

He added that Ghanaians will resist any such attempt “with our blood”.