The General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC) has shot down the Electoral Commission’s plan of compiling a new voters’ register ahead of the 2020 general elections.
Mr. Asiedu Nketiah said it’s quite worrying the EC’s decision of forcibly changing the paradigm of replacing the register at ten year intervals after a Population census.
According to the NDC General Scribe, the current document is largely an improvement because of the deployment of biometric registration, adding he believes the country will be better of staying with the ten year rule of replacing the electoral roll and the intermittent upgrade.
“In my view, there is no such need because, first of all why do we require a new register? Our practice in the country has been that we replace the register completely every decade particularly after a population census,” said Mr. Asiedu Nketiah on Joy FM’s News File.
He added: “…You can never have a register without ghost names, because you can write your name today on your way home you can die. Your name remains on the register…So it was calculated that every year the number of ghost names that are generated because of these deaths and other things and the Ghanaian attitude of not wanting to pinpoint names of dead people to be deleted; so you see that every year there is some accumulation of ghost names on the register. So it was determined that by ten years, the number of accumulated ghost names would have been significant so if we do a population census and after that population census, there are movement in the age bracket and so on then there is the need for us to compile a new register.”
The opposition parties have denied agreeing with the Electoral Commission’s (EC) decision to put together a new voters’ register for the next general polls.
The main opposition NDC on the back of this development has demanded the withdrawal of the communique issued by the EC that suggested the political parties’ consent to the compilation of new voter roll ahead of the 2020 general elections, because no such consensus was reached.
“In fact, the compilation of a new voters’ register was only mentioned in passing by the EC during discussion on limited registration. There certainly was no “extensive deliberations “ on this particular matter”, the statement signed by General Secretary of the NDC said.
