EC Faces Supreme Court Suit -As woes worsen for Railroading New Voters Register

The Chamber for Local Governance (ChaLoG), has threatened to drag the Electoral Commission to Court for attempting to sneak in a new Voters’; Register and Biometric Verification Machines (BVDs).

The EC is demanding a mouth-watering GHC 444 million to undertake the exercise, but ChaLoG and several civil society groups have warned that the Jean Mensah-led EC is not justified in embarking on an exercise to overhaul the voters’ register.

In a ChaLoG statement made available to Whatsup News, the group says it is surprised that “the very same commission which spent $2 million of the Tax Payers Money to prepare the BVDs is now telling Ghanaians that these same BVDs have become obsolete (immediately after the District Level Elections) and hence cannot be compatible with its new IT Software so the Tax Payers Money of Ghc 444 million should wantonly be dissipated on a new IT Infrastructure and the compilation of a New Biometric Voters Register.”

“Against this background therefore, the EC needs to urgently prepare to appear before the apex court to answer the following questions to clear the confusion in the minds of the Tax Payers whose sweat and toil it is seeking to profligately spend to procure new IT software and compile a New Biometric Voters Register,” the statement from the group read.

The EC, recently conducted the District Assemblies elections with the existing register and BVDs as election observers give their verdict that the process was about 90% successful and without any technical incident.

Groups opposing the EC’s GHC 444 million plan are therefore wondering how the EC could be having the need to compile a new register when the existing one performed successfully during the nationwide assemblies’ elections.

“The continual insistence of the EC to go ahead to compile a New Biometric Voters Register in spite of the overwhelming evidence of the effective functionality of the BVDs for the 2012 General Elections, 2015 District Level Elections, 2018 Referendum and 2019 District Level Elections is only an attempt to create a problem which simply does not exist by the EC to create a fertile grounds to go ahead to needlessly and intentionally wantonly dissipate a whopping Ghc 444 million  of the Tax Payers Money just for the sake it, “ stated ChaLoG.

Meanwhile, groups such as the Inter-Party Resistance Against  The New Voters’ Register has outline plans to mount nationwide protests to discourage the EC’s move.