By Adu Koranteng
The Electoral Commission of Ghana has assured the general public that the Ayawaso Wuogon voters register is clean. The commission says the register reflects the total number of valid voters in the constituency and not bloated as claimed by the NDC.
EC’s statement was in reaction to issues raised by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The National Democratic Congress, earlier this week, raised concerns about the electoral register for the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency ahead of the January 31 by-elections.
The opposition party accused the EC of not providing them with a credible register for the by-election.
The NDC further criticized the leadership of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa, of trying to jeopardize the credibility of the election.
According to the NDC, attempts to access the Proxy list, Transfer List and Special Voters List yielded no results.
But describing the claims as ‘untrue’, the Commission in a statement said: “the NDC requested a copy of the said lists on Friday,
the 25th of January 2019 when the activities at the Commission had winded down. It is significant to note that the author of the press release has unlimited access to the Chairman responsible for operations, and could have reached him without much effort”.
“Letters of such nature go through a process of recording at the registry before they are brought to the attention of the addresses. Requests for confidential information require the approval of the Chairperson or Deputy Chairpersons before same are released. Whilst the Commission believes in responding in a timely manner to requests from the political parties, it will not compromise its processes and laid down systems for any entity.
“The Commission finds it surprising, that rather than approaching the Commission to discuss this issue, the NDC chose to go public, accusing the Commission of bloating the register to favour a particular political party. These allegations are baseless and unfounded and we call on the public to disregard them”.
“For the information of the public the special voters list, Transfer List and the Proxy List were contained in separate lists in 2016 they have now been combined with the main lists, hence the increase in numbers. The electoral commission has since provided the NDC with all the registers/ lists they have requested.”, the statement said.
