NPP accuses EC of dancing to one party’s tune

The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is accusing the Electoral Commission of Ghana of deliberately refusing to heed calls for a new voters’ register in order to favour a political party.

Manager of the NPP’s campaign team, Peter Mac-Manu, who addressed a press conference held at the party’s headquarters in Accra, told a section of the media that: “Even though the current register’s credibility has been questioned by no less a body than the Supreme Court, the EC is determined to keep it in order to give a particular political party an undue and unfair advantage”.

Mr Mac-Manu, who is spearheading Nana Akufo-Addo’s third time bid to be president of Ghana, however, stopped short of mentioning which political party was to gain from the EC’s apparent obduracy.

Mr Mac-Manu said he could not understand the refusal of the Electoral Commission to implement all the recommendations by the Supreme Court insisting that “it is the responsibility of the commission, but no one else, to adhere to the Supreme Court decision and purge the register of all such illegal entries before giving those, who are eligible to vote another opportunity to now register legally”.

Ghana is heading for elections on November 7, 2015 to elect a president and 275 parliamentarians to govern the country when President John Mahama’s tenure comes to an end. Apart from the NPP claiming that there were over 76,000 Togolese on the register, its flagbearer also said the roll was bloated by more than two million names.

The party, thus, has been clamouring for a new roll, in collaboration with pressure group Let My Vote Count Alliance and some other parties. It led to the EC organising a forum over the matter. A five-member panel of eminent members tasked by the EC to handle the matter later recommended that the old register be maintained but cleaned.