President of policy think tank IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has described as “nauseating” the Electoral Commission’s (EC) argument for compiling a new voters’ register for the 2020 general elections.
On Citi FM on Saturday, Franklin Cudjoe said: “It’s just becoming nauseating hearing some of the arguments being made in affirmation of a change in the voter roll. Absolutely none of them makes sense. In fact, they do not hold water. There’s no evidence that has been brought to bear.”
“The EC told the whole world that the biometric systems we have have reached their seven-year life cycle and so they needed to replace them. Then we went and verified from the EC’s own financial documents and there’s actually been purchasing and procuring items to improve the system. As recently as 2019, they purchased about 500 of these machines which enabled them to run the district level elections and the referendum that was done in 2018,” Mr. Cudjoe said as the argument against the EC’s new register intensifies.
Already, the EC is facing two lawsuits in the courts. One of the suits was filed by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Supreme Court, and it is set to be heard by June 11, 2020.
“In fact, the EC has spent US$60 million in improving these systems in bringing them to near perfection so it cannot be true that all of a sudden without having done an audit of the asset of the EC, every bit of the system is kaput. They’ve never been able to show us a single piece of evidence to merit that claim,” Mr. Cudjoe jabbed.
The Commission claims that the existing voters’ register is compromised by bloating and that it contains foreigners.
However, the EC has used the same register to conduct three major elections in the past year. This is after a lawsuit by Abu Ramadan of the People’s National Convention (PNC) has seen the Supreme Court ordering the register to be cleaned up.
The EC is also being criticised for seeking to disenfranchise Ghanaians, voters, by limiting the primary documents for registration to Ghanaian passport and the National ID card.