Political parties back compilation of new voters roll
Representatives of the Political Parties who participated in the Interparty Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting have given strong backing to the decision by the Electoral Commission (EC) to compile a new voters register.
The issues that came up for discussion at the meeting included; its preparations, precautionary measures, the cluster system of registration, mopping up exercise, time frame, the special arrangement for the vulnerable groups and the identification to be used for the registration.
The first group that attended the meeting were; the representatives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Convention People’s Party (CPP), the Institute for Democratic Governance, United Progressive Party and Ghana Freedom Party.
Speaking to the media at the end of the meeting, Mr John Boadu, General Secretary of the NPP said the Commission’s planning, which included; the observance of safety precautions at the registration centre was commendable.
He said the meeting reached a consensus that the exercise should start in last week of June and end in July that EC would fix a date and communicate appropriately to the stakeholders.
Mr Boadu said the EC’s proposed clustering of 33,367 polling stations nationwide was an appropriate approach, which would give the opportunity to people to register.
Mr James Kwabena Bomfeh Jr., the Acting General Secretary of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) said the framework the EC presented towards the registration exercise was good.
He urged the public to prepare and support the Commission to undertake the registration to pave way for the 2020 parliamentary and presidential elections.
Mr Joseph Osei Yeboah, an aspiring Independent Presidential candidate for the 2020 election, said the EC informed them that the equipment that would be used for the registration had arrived in the country.
He stated that the Parties raised issues about the EC’s plan to constantly clean the registration kits after every registration, and suggested that the use of alcohol based sanitizer would reduce the efficiency of the kits.
Dr Eric Bossman Asare, a Deputy Commissioner in charge of Corporate Services of the EC speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the outcome of the meeting said he was satisfied and it was an exercise that would deepen the democracy of the country.
He explained that the cluster system implied adding five registration centres to constitute a cluster.
Asked about allegation of disenfranchising people through the use of only Ghana card and passport, he explained that people who did not have the two national identifications could present two registered people to guarantee for them.
Dr Asare assured the Commission would take adequate measures to ensure the safety of all stakeholders and appealed to the public to support the Commission to compile a credible register to be used to conduct the elections.
Source: GNA