Confusion rocked the inspection of ballot papers for the December 7 Parliamentary election in the Northern Region on Friday, after the Regional Director of the Electoral Commission (EC) tried to prevent the represenatives of the various political parties from taking pictures of the materials.
The Northern Regional Secretary of the NPP, Sule Salifu who led the charge against the Regional EC Boss, said the latter’s action was arbitrary as he failed to consult the political parties who are key stakeholders.
The exercise which was taking place at the Regional Police Command, was momentarily truncated as the EC Boss lodged a formal complaint at the police station against the NPP Regional Secretary.
It is unclear why the EC boss wanted to prevent pictures of the election materials being taken, but it is thought that he must have drawn lessons from the incident that saw pictures of the ballot papers sent to the Upper West Region being taken and posted onto social media platforms with wild allegations that the materials had been intercepted at a political party’s office. The EC later dismissed that allegation.
Calm was later restored for the inspection exercise to continue.
The parties eventually succeded in taking the pictures.