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The Electoral Commission (EC) has urged Ghanaians to trust it to produce a credible register for the conduct of the presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7, 2024.
It said the errors identified by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the provisional voters register have “largely” been fixed for the preparation of the final register.
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Mrs Jean Mensa (left) interacting with some of the participants after the Inter-Party Advisory Committee meeting Photo: Victor A. Buxton
The EC chairperson, Mrs Jean Mensa, told an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting in Accra, yesterday that her outfit would not fail in its mandate to deliver a credible register for fair and transparent polls.
“It is important to emphasise that the register in question is a provisional register generated immediately after the registration of voters. It is a draft register. It is not the final register,” Mrs Mensa said.
According to the NDC, the register is fraught with irregularities which could affect about 300,000 votes and ultimately affect the credibility of the pending polls.
The irregularities, the NDC itemised include 243,540 previous transfers illegally added to 2024 transfers, over 15,000 unidentifiable voter transfers paths, 3,957 names deleted from the roll, 2,094 voters transferred to different polling stations and corrupt files.
But Dr Yaw Ofori-Adjei, the Head of IT at the EC, assured participants that “on December 7, the registers that will be sent to the polling stations will not have (the errors identified)”.
In a presentation to participants, Dr Ofori-Adjei said the electoral laws have self-cleansing mechanisms that would correct all the anomalies that would arise in the production of the final voter register.
Responding to claims of unsolicited transfers in Pusiga for example, he said that occurred because the officer in charge took advantage of the vulnerability in the IT system; a vulnerability he says has been addressed.
The NDC’s claim of untraceable transfers, he said were false, and that no deletions were done to persons who were captured as being registered.
“We have demonstrated to you that the EC has in place, tried and tested processes to produce a credible register that ensures a free, fair and transparent elections,” Dr Ofori-Adjei said.
“The anomalies that have been identified today have been fixed. The register is clean, robust and ready for election 2024.”
The NDC, however, said it does not trust that the anomalies have been addressed by the Commission.
The Director of Elections for the NDC, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, said the EC’s conduct over the years had made it difficult for the party to trust the assurances of the EC.
He cited the missing biometric device kits, arithmetic mistakes of the Commission in the past and the multiple declaration of the 2020 presidential results amongst others as the reasons for the mistrust.
“We must build trust to take those assurances. Assurance is built on trust but the trust is broken,” Dr Boamah stated.
For the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), the NDC must apply itself to the laid down rules and procedures for cleaning the voters roll before jumping to conclusion.
Director of Elections for the 2024 NPP campaign, Peter Mac Manu recounted how the NDC opposed calls for audit in 2015.
He called for principled politicking that serves the interest of the state than parochial partisan interest.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
