EC jabs NPP Over Allegations On Voters’ Register
The Chair of the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC), Charlotte Osei, has pointed out that the appearance of registered voters in the roll of Ghana and other countries cannot warrant their removal from the former’s roll.
According to Ms Osei, there are multiple ways of acquiring Ghanaian citizenship and the EC has no mandate to alter those legislations.
The EC is only mandated to register any eligible Ghanaian citizen, Ms Osei said
She made these known in her presentation on Friday, October 30 at the stakeholders’ forum on the voters’ register.
The forum, which began on Thursday, October 29, was instanced by allegations of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that there are at least 76, 000 Togolese in Ghana’s register, making it overly flawed.
On the first day of the forum, the NPP accused the EC of not responding to its petition submitted a couple of months ago.
“We have responded,” Ms Osei stressed, “but maybe not in a way that they liked [and] we thought it is important to go over….”
She said the Commission takes the allegations very seriously “and we thought we needed to respond to them one after the other”.
Ms Osei insisted that the voters’ register has become representative of Ghana’s identification system to the extent that banks and other security agencies consult her outfit for data on Ghanaians.
She, therefore, called for a proper identification system while all stakeholders come on board to help the EC audit the current register.
Ms Osei promised addressing all the issues raised by the NPP in its petition to the EC “just that when we get ready to respond, they come up with another one.”
“But we would respond to them,” she assured.
