Nana Slams EC Over Electoral Reforms

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Created on Tuesday, 30 December 2014 00:00

Nana Slams EC Over Electoral Reforms

29 December 2014

Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, is pushing for a new voters’ register for the 2016 general elections.

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He believes the existing register is not only anomalous, but also bloated; hence the need to clean it up.

Speaking at a well-attended forum of members of the UK branch of the NPP and the Ghanaian community on Sunday at the Dominion Centre in Wood Green, North London, he said “One cardinal, absolutely essential reform that I believe we must insist on is the need for us to have a new voters’ register.”

Nana Addo said it was essential for the Electoral Commission to speedily implement the reforms that were recommended in last year’s Supreme Court verdict as well as to respond to calls by various civil society groups.

“We need a credible, transparent register that is acceptable to all and the party will continue to campaign for the right things to be done,” he stressed.

Concern

That, he said, was because “Our desire is to have elections which results are easily acceptable by the contending parties and by the population at large. The present voters’ register that we have in Ghana is bloated and is anomalous and there is an urgent need for us to have a broad consensus in our country to make sure that we get a new voters’ register before the next elections.”

He could not fathom why South Africa, with the most involved and active political population in the entire continent of Africa, has 47.7 per cent of voter population, while Ghana has 56.7 per cent. The revelation amazed the crowd.

“I’m not looking for a system that says that at all cost Nana Akufo-Addo has to win; we want a system that is fair. If he has won, let it be so; if he has lost, let it be so, so that we can all accept the results,” he emphasised.

He therefore acknowledged the Supreme Court’s own admission and recommendation of electoral reforms in Ghana.

According to Nana Addo, that was part of the reasons the National Executive Committee of the NPP constituted an Elections Committee headed by his running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, to put together a comprehensive set of proposals for submission to the Electoral Commission.

Proposal

Left to him alone, Nana Akufo-Addo said, he would have preferred an independent electoral commission to undertake the electoral reforms exercise, even though the current constitutional provision places the responsibility on the EC.

He also talked about the upcoming parliamentary primaries of the NPP which from all indications was likely to take place in the coming year.

The NPP presidential candidate was hopeful that the party would have what he described as “a well-managed process that will have above all, the interest of the party, not the candidate of the party, as the paramount consideration so that we will have a process that will enable us get over this hurdle and put us in the position to forge ahead for victory in 2016.”

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

Source: Daily Guide