{"id":147612,"date":"2015-08-31T12:37:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T12:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=147612"},"modified":"2015-08-31T12:37:19","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T12:37:19","slug":"assembly-election-ec-defends-payments-for-media-accreditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=147612","title":{"rendered":"Assembly election: EC defends charging media for accreditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Electoral Commission (EC) has defended its decision to charge journalists and other observers who want to cover the upcoming district level electio<span style=\"color: #666699;\">n <strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/08\/29\/journalists-to-pay-ghc8-to-cover-assembly-elections\/\" target=\"_blank\">an amount of Gh\u00a28<\/a><\/strong><\/span> for accreditation cards.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Some journalists in the Ashanti and Western regions have lamented that the EC \u00a0has asked them to pay the amount or forfeit the coverage of the elections.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;oJ1zCgt9quZWGdrj9cR0ZL585Tf9XMnj&#8221;]This has angered many with some ournalists in the country questioning the rationale behind the payments.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, holding on to its position, the Director of Public Affairs at the EC, Christian Owusu Parry in an interview <strong>with Citi News<\/strong> said such payments are not new since it&#8217;s a normal thing done by the commission.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He explained that \u201cwe do not have a budget line for preparing accreditation cards for media personnel and election observers and that is why if any media house or any group of observers want to go and observe the process, they have to pay some fees for accreditation cards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Parry stressed that reporters without accreditation cards \u201cwill not be allowed to cover the elections.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On the election scheduled for Tuesday, September 1,\u00a0Christian Owusu Parry said they have begun <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/08\/31\/were-ready-for-assembly-elections-ec\/\" target=\"_blank\">conveying the materials<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to the various polling stations.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe Commission is ready for the elections. As we speak all the materials for the elections are already in the district. Training session has come to a close. We will begin putting the ballot papers and other election materials in the ballot boxes and then in the early hours of Tuesday we will send the materials to the various polling stations,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8211;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By: Godwin A. Allotey\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AlloteyGodwin\" data-show-count=\"false\">Follow @AlloteyGodwin<\/a><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=\/^http:\/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+':\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Electoral Commission (EC) has defended its decision to charge journalists and other observers who want to cover the upcoming district level election an amount of Gh\u00a28 for accreditation cards. Some journalists in the Ashanti and Western regions have lamented that the EC \u00a0has asked them to pay the amount or forfeit the coverage of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":124707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,17],"class_list":["post-147612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-wassa-akropong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/124707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}