“It’s clear that the NDC has lost Election 2020,” says Nimako
The NPP’s research director, Evans Nimako, says the NDC’s fresh allegations against the Electoral Commission about the voters’ register are shockingly ignorant proof that it knows it has lost the December polls
Evans Nimako, the director of research and elections for the New Patriotic Party, has expressed shock over fresh allegations relating to the voters’ register, levelled against the Electoral Commission by the National Democratic Congress. Nimako said the NDC’s complaints show clearly that the opposition party knows it has lost Election 2020 even before the poll takes place in December.
He was speaking in an interview with Nana Yaa Mensah on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Thursday (8 October), following fresh concerns raised by the opposition party about the compilation of the voters’ register by the Electoral Commission (EC).
“[The NDC leaders] must change their position, but it is clear that they have lost the December 7 elections and so they will keep on crying,” he said.
“Some of the things they keep on saying, if you check the laws are far off … so it surprises me why they [should] still be making those noises in the public.”
Legal requirements
On Wednesday the general secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, told journalists that his party feels vindicated for having taken a negative position on the EC’s plans to compile a new voters’ register for Election 2020. By way of justification, he cited what he described as a host of challenges confronting the compilation process.
The NDC general secretary accused the EC of operating outside the law, because it asked the political parties to file presidential and parliamentary nominations before it publishes a complete and certified electoral roll.
But Evans Nimako argued that the processes the EC used to compile the previous voters’ register before the 2016 elections have not changed.
“That will be the NDC’s interpretation, and they will be stuck to that. You need to look at CI 91, regulation 27 [subsection] 4,” he told The Asaase Breakfast Show.
The subsection reads: “The Commission shall make available a certified copy of the register to the registered political parties and any other person that the Commission considers necessary not later than 21 days after the register has been certified.”
Register the facts
“There are timelines. And so we need to ask ourselves what has been the trend,” Nimako told Mensah. “It may not be the first time [to do this when] we are going into an election.
“The fact that we have a provisional register and are awaiting the certified register doesn’t mean we don’t have a register for an election,” he argued. “So they can keep to that interpretation. But for us at the NPP we are focused.”
Fred Dzakpata
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