NDC walks out of Electoral Commission’s technical meeting on new voters register

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Thursday walked out of a meeting called by the Electoral Commission (EC) for technical persons of the political parties and the commission in relation to the plan for a new voters register.

The NDC argued that the letter inviting them to the meeting did not have an agenda, but when they arrived at the meeting Thursday, it was made clear to them that the decision to have a new voters register, had already been made.

The EC, they said, rather went ahead to discuss with them modalities on how to compile a new voters’ register which they have opposed.

To them, since a decision on what they were going to discuss had already been made, there was no need to be part of the meeting.

Supporting the NDC’s walkout were representatives of two other political parties, the People’s National Convention (PNC) and the United Front Party (UFP).

According to them, their understanding was that the meeting was to discuss outstanding issues on whether or not a new register was needed.

Despite the action by the NDC, PNC and UFP, the meeting went on with representatives of the other political parties.

“There was supposed to be a meeting today and we believe that the agreement we reached at the meeting with the Committee of Eminent Persons was to the effect that they [Electoral Commission] will continue engaging us, continue engaging the technical persons of the political parties on the technical issues relative to whether we needed a new register or not,” the General Secretary of the NDC, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia said in an interview with journalists.

“So we were all expectant that we will now meet the Electoral Commission and to investigate whether we should do a new register or not based on sound technical reasons.”

“We had a letter some three days ago that our technical persons were expected to meet the Electoral Commission this morning [Thursday], in fact without any agenda. So we had to write back to them that we can no longer continue to be ambushed into meetings because it is an issue we raised even with the Committee of Eminent Persons, the Electoral Commission is engaged in a charade of consultations, they pretend to be consulting you when they are not consulting you” Mr Asiedu Nketia said.

Source; graphic online