NDC sues EC over provisional voters’ register

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has sued the Electoral Commission (EC) for failing to provide the party with a provisional copy of the voters’ register to guide it in the just-ended voters register exhibition exercise.

The party said it decided to take that line of action because the EC had failed to honour countless requests for the register from the party.

Speaking to Umaru Sanda on Eyewitness News, the General Secretary of the party, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia said that they were already in court because they want to ensure that the right thing is done.
“We are already in court because we want to insist that things should be done properly. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. And it is the duty of every citizen to ensure that this system of rule of law works,” he said.

He alleged that they didn’t see why the governing NPP had already been provided with a copy of the register while they weren’t.

“The purpose of the register is to give an opportunity for corrections to be made. It is precisely because of this that after the capture of the register the law provides that a provisional register be made available to all political parties. This is to help our agents to be armed with the information to cross-check whether things are okay or not. Why don’t we have the register?” he said.

“Denying the political party, NDC, the opportunity to have the register with which we will cross-check and satisfy ourselves that the register is credible is a major problem,” he added.

The voter’s exhibition exercise started on September 10, 2019, and was expected to end on September 17, 2019, but it was extended to September 20 by the Electoral Commission.

The exercise was meant to clean the register ahead of the upcoming referendum on the participation of political parties in district-level elections, which will be an opportunity for the about 17 million registered voters to authenticate their details in the register.

Addressing the outcome of the exercise, Mr. Nketia also stated that “we think that the registration process has not been done well and the only opportunity to make corrections has been intentionally been messed up so that the register will be compromised.”