Former First Lady and Founder of the National Democratic Party, NDP, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, has backed calls for a new voters’ register for Ghana, alluding to the assertions that the current register is bloated.
The New Patriotic Party, backed by other opposition parties, has provided what it says is evidence to show that the current voters’ register is bloated and cannot guarantee credible elections in 2016.
The party also provided evidence suggesting the register has the names of at least 80,000 foreigners, mostly Togolese nationals.
[contextly_sidebar id=”uHyw0vAVMcCXpCGGxeEeiCxnSpW5GXfm”]Although the governing National Democratic Congress has rubbished the NPP’s claims and calls for a new register, the NPP has petitioned the Electoral Commission over the old register.
The Electoral Commission indicated its readiness to consider the proposal with all stakeholders this September, after an IPAC meeting in August.
Addressing the media in Accra, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings urged the Electoral commission to heed the calls to guarantee peaceful and fair elections in 2016.
“I believe that it will serve the interest of Ghana and Ghanaians if the voters’ register is revisited and we all re-register and weed out all the ghost names and foreign names, to see the real potential of the Ghanaian voter and let them vote for who they want. I think it is in our interest as a nation to do that because to pretend that we do not know that it is bloated and all that is a farce”.
The former First Lady who has been championing electronic voting says once a cleaned register is perfectly done, Ghana could consider electronic voting.
“And as much as our party the NDP says that the voters’ register should be cleaned out, we also believe that if it is done and done well for Ghana to have a quick step ahead of the rest of West Africa, maybe we should also be looking at electronic voting after we’ve re-registered and we’ve seen how its working, that should be the next move. You go to the box and put your hand on the machine then the machine counts for you so that no human being will do that to add some numbers to it. It would be clear for us as to who a winner is in any election then there would be no discrepancies and so on. Therefore we believe that the voters register must be looked at again for us to have a new register so that it will be clean with no issues of pink sheets and the likes”.
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By: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie/citifmonline.com/Ghana