I Did “Leaked” Audio Calling For Street Action Against EC Over New Register …NDC Director of Elections

Director of Elections of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, has revealed that the secret audio capturing his voice asking party faithful to mass up for street action against the new Voters’ Register that the Electoral Commission wants to compile was deliberately recorded and released by himself.

In a radio interview that WhatsUp News monitored today, he explains that the audio was in response to the declaration by Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, at an NPP Conference, that the NDC can never win any elections in Ghana if the new register is compiled.

“First of all its not a secret thing, I did the audio myself. So it’s not any secret….when Osei Kyei Mensahs Bonsu said at their conference that the NDC cannot win any election with the new register, then our people became alarmed, so they started calling from allover the country… on my WhatsApp over 400 WhatsApp messages responding to them… so I decided to do this short audio and send it to some of our key groups, and you know how these things work; somebody sent it and somebody sent it…”

Mr. Afriyie Ankrah said the mystery and secrecy that people are attaching to the audio is only fanciful because it was not an audio that he intended to be secretive given that he knew the government had its eyes everywhere.

In the audio, the NDC Director of Elections is heard telling his listeners that the NDC should get its followers to bring Accra to a standstill by means of a street protest that will force the EC to withdraw the controversial new register.

“We are going to spend, hundreds of millions of Ghana cedis or tens of millions of Ghana cedis to do the campaign. If we lose, God forbid, God forbid, God forbid, the election, all that money would have been gone. If we invest ghc200,000, Ghc500,000, Ghc1,000,000 and fight this register, bring Accra to a standstill for once, occupy the EC Head Office, and we can don it, we have done it before. These are things we’ve been doing. Even as ordinary students we brought Ministry of Finance to a standstill, we brought Ministry of Education to a standstill, we can do it, it is possible. Let’s have confidence in ourselves. Please let’s stop the defeatist attitude, we can do it, we can move people and bring this country to a standstill, just one day and they will withdraw. They have withdrawn many, many, many, many other Bills; we can give examples. It’s not impossible, whether they pass it in Parliament or not, we must resist this thing, we can do it,” Afriyie Ankrah is heard saying in the audio clip.

He justifies the rallying call by pointing out that the country does not need a new register as the existing one is fit for purpose. The NDC Director of Elections wondered what justification was there for potentially spending over Ghc700 million to compile a new register.

“The reason we went biometric in 2012 was because we wanted to end the cycle of recompiling registers at the end of every election cycle,” he pointed out.

He also wondered why the EC is in a hurry to compile a new register ahead of the upcoming census at the turn of the decade, and also in an election year.

Elvis Afriyie Ankrah did not mince words in reiterating the NDC’s position that the EC is only on a mission to compile a new register because it wants to rig the 2020 election for the NPP.

Just last week, NDC General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, told a press conference that the NDC has discovered the shenanigans that the NPP employed to win the 2012 election by a surprise landslide and that now that the NDC is aware, there is no way the NPP can win any free and fair election again.