Veteran Journalist Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, has challenged the Ministry of Foreign Affair to immediately clarify the controversy surrounding an alleged secret meeting between Ghana’s Embassy in Togo and Togo’s Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) in an attempt to disprove findings made by the NPP Running Mate, Dr Mahamadu Bawumiah about Ghana’s bloated electoral register.
According to him, the Ministry’s deafening silence on the matter is most unfortunate, adding that the ministry had no business contacting the Togo EC over the issue if indeed it is established that the meeting took place.
Recently there were media reports that a meeting was held between Ghana’s Ambassador, Johnny Kwadwo and the Executive Secretary of Togo’s Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Kpatcha Takonda Kossi, during which, the latter denied releasing his country’s voters’ register to anyone, insisting that document is a sovereign Legal Document, kept firmly under guard.
Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, had earlier at a recent Press conference stated that painstaking investigations after securing a copy of the Togolese voters register had established that about 76,000 Togolese were registered on Ghana’s register, which makes the register compromised and hence must not be used for the 2016 election.
Some Ghanaians resident in Togo are also contesting claims by the NPP that it compared the Togolese voters’ register to that of Ghana and found that thousands of Togolese vote in Ghana.
The group, calling itself Ghana Citizens in Togo says it is impossible for the NPP to obtain that country’s voters’ register which would prove the claims.
However speaking on Joy FM’s news analysis programme News File, Abdul Malik Kwaku Baako stated that the groups claim and other media reports that the Togolese register cannot be accessed by any third party cannot be accepted wholly.
“Until now, we have not heard the Togolese Electoral Commission speak to this issue, and we are being invited to speak to this issue like it is the gospel truth. Are they telling us that the opposition parties who are part of the Togolese INEC tough in the minority don’t have copies of the voters register? This will be strange; the whole claim is a fallacy”.
By: Kasapafmonline.com/Ghana
