The September 1st District Assembly level elections may suffer yet another setback as a member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dominic Nsiah Asare is threatening to drag Electoral Commission to court over the credibility of the voters’ register.
[contextly_sidebar id=”0ahWtIh3TzVQGLKNgWU95zWkaMUylgwm”]Dominic Nsiah Asare argued that the overwhelming evidence presented by the NPP’s Vice Presidential Candidate in the 2016 election, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is a clear indication that the voters register is over bloated and cannot be used for the District level elections.
Dominic Nsiah Asare is concerned that foreigners may vote in the September 1st election if the register is not changed.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, Nsiah Asare said he will go to court unless the Electoral Commission addresses the issues raised by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
He said per the ruling by the Supreme Court that “the electoral commission should go and reorganize themselves for the district assembly elections,” the directive has not bee adhered to.
“According to the proceedings, the electoral commission was supposed to reopen the voters register for people who had turned 18 at that time and also for Ghanaians who had travelled into the country to register so that they can also exercise their franchise during elections. That one didn’t take place, the Electoral Commission just closed that issue because they thought Ghanaians would never get to know of it.”
On allegations that foreigners are on the nation’s voters register, Nsiah Asare said “the EC must come out to answer that question because if they don’t and after the district assembly elections they come out to tell Ghanaians that there was a problem with the register it means that we have used an illegal register to conduct the elections.”
“The Electoral Commission must answer the petition before the elections or else we will take a court action and make sure that another injunction is placed on the district assembly election,” he stressed.
The Supreme Court had earlier directed the EC to postpone the local level elections, which was scheduled for September 2015.
The EC was dragged to court by an aspiring Assembly man, Benjamin Eyi Mensah, represented by lawyer Alex Afenyo Markin.
According to Eyi Mensah, a fisherman, he was denied an opportunity to file his nomination despite meeting all conditions to contest but the EC closed nominations before the maturation of the Constitutional Instrument (CI) 85.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana