The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) is giving reasons why the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) is backing calls for the Electoral Commission to rescind its decision to compile a new voter register.
According to GACC, if the just ended district assembly election was conducted using the current voters’ register and the EC is saying the system is obsolete then the district assembly elections must be annulled.
Speaking in an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show (HMS), Samuel Harrison-Cudjoe of GACC reveals why the GACC and other 17 CSOs are opposing the new voter register.
“The EC is saying the system is obsolete, so did they use the obsolete system to run the district assembly elections? If yes, then we must annul the election if only the system is obsolete. The EC also told us they spent 2million to work on the machine used to conduct the district assembly election. So if u really want to save money for Ghanaians, why are they not spending a maximum of 5 million cedis to prepare the machines for 2020 elections?
He added that “Civil Societies our recommendations are five and it’s based on 1. The EC should open up the electoral register for voters to verify their names.
- Update the existing software in ways to make it more efficient.
- Remove names of persons suspected dead or who do not verify.
- Work with the vendors to prime the hardware and where needed replace faulty ones.
- Acquire new hardware to augment the existing stock and work with the existing systems. This is the more justified approach given time and resource considerations and indeed is the most technically feasible and defensible approach compared to totally replacing the entire system at great cost and running the nation through the trauma of another voter registration exercise.”
The issue of a new register has sparked massive controversy in the country with the NDC leading a coalition of opposition parties to demonstrate against it while the governing NPP is also rallying for it along with some other parties.
The parties against it have cited cost and timing concerns for their opposition.
Now they have support from 18 CSOs under the GACC, who believe the nation does not, in the face of the present facts, need to throw out everything and acquire a totally new infrastructure when the present system can be augmented and be made capable of performing the task.
By: Joseph Nii Ankrah
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