The New Patriotic Party (NPP) says it will soon present evidence supporting its claim that some foreign nationals have been registered on Ghana’s voters’ register to the Electoral Commission (EC).
The NPP had cited names of about 13,000 Burkinabes in the country’s voters’ register.
[contextly_sidebar id=”pZl685jomEuQ51ihsCkG5vOZeZVqdP9a”]This is in addition to the over 78,000 Togolese nationals it had earlier alleged were contained in the register but the EC during a stakeholders forum on the voters’ register on Friday, challenged the party to substantiate its claims with evidence.
The EC Chairperson Charlotte Osei also requested the NPP to furnishb the commission with the Togolese register.
Responding to the EC, the party’s former Chairman, Peter Mac Manu, on Eyewitness News said the party is willing to prove that some foreign nationals had been registered.
Regarding the Togolese register, the party says it will hand it over the EC.
“We are not scared of it because we have the register, we submitted it . We showed portions of the register to the general public at the Alisa Hotel…we have the register so we will send it, no problem.”
He further wondered why the EC decided to visit Kenya and South Africa to find out about the voter population but failed to visit Togo-the country the NPP had cited in relation to the bloated voters’ register.
“What is strange about the whole issue is that, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission says she went to Kenya to find out about their voter population vis-a-vis the entire Kenyan population, she went to South Africa to find out about the voter population there and she could not go to Togo for the Togolese register. That is quite an awkward thing to me.”
Most of the political parties at the just ended forum asked the Commission to rather audit the register instead of creating a new one but Mr. Manu believes the process of auditing the current register will be cumbersome.
“If we are going to do an audit , how are we also going to audit the system’s failure because many of the issues that pop up in double and multiple registrations arose out of faulty software or faulty computer system” he argued.
Asked whether the NPP will consider softening its entrenched position on getting a new voters’ register, he said the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) will have to “meet and decide.”
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By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah