Nov 15, 2012 at 7:04pm

Communications Director for the Coalition of Domestic Elections Observers (CODEO), Theodore Dzeble, has expressed dismay at the Electoral Commission’s (E.C.) decision to exclude them from the special voting exercise and described it as a ‘major setback’ in the election process.

“It is a very serious setback for us because CODEO is deploying over 4000 observers and they will all like to vote before they go to the field.”

“We are still working and hoping that the E.C. will somehow give us a leeway so that we can make this happen because in the past, CODEO and the EC have worked together to the point that we compare notes. They have used CODEO as a back up and I’m sure they want that to continue,” he added.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan on Thursday revealed that after careful scrutiny of the voters register, there were too many minors detected.

In his opinion, it would be unwise to attempt to remove the suspected minors from the list at this time.

CODEO has however suggested that the Electoral Commission publish the names of the minors.

“It will be useful for the EC to publish these names in various constituencies because it is taking them too long to come out and that has made the problem a bit dicey,” Theodore Dzeble pointed out.

He noted that "[it will be] “difficult but not impossible to deter the minors from voting”.

“The public should not just say that because their names are in the register, it is final. We all saw the names that the EC brought out today and you can just see from the pictures that these people are minors,” he noted.

“Once they are minors, the EC has to decide how to deal with them... because their votes are a crucial factor in determining who wins. A threat of prosecution can work some wonders for us,” he added.



By: Deborah Wiafe Agyei/Citifmonline.com/Ghana