Mahama cuts short Bono tour over “voter register challenges”
The candidate and his running mate, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, have suspended their tours of the Bono and the Central Regions
John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has suspended his tour of the Bono Region over concerns about the new voters’ register.
He announced the suspension on the second day of his planned four-day tour of the Bono Region.
Mahama said the move is to enable him and other NDC leaders to travel back to Accra to assist with investigating “challenges with the voter register”.
“I am cutting short my tour of the Bono Region to return to Accra because of the increasing reports of challenges with the voter register and the exhibition process,” Mahama posted on his Facebook page.
A subsequent press statement announced that the former president would address the press about the matter on Thursday 24 September at 1pm.
“Incompetent” EC
Speaking during his tour of the Bono Region, Mahama said the incompetence of the Electoral Commission is legendary.
“There are so many wrongs going on; the incompetence of this EC has been legendary. We have held elections in this country, we have held voters’ registrations in this country, but we have never seen a situation where there are so much chaos and disorder [sic] in an electoral process,” he said.
“This has the potential to create a crisis. As we speak, we don’t know if we are going to have a credible register with which we can have a free and fair election, because we are not confident in the process that is going on.”
Too short
The NDC has criticised the one-week window for exhibition of the voters’ register.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra, the party’s director of elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, said the Jean Mensa and Bossman Asare-led EC has been a mess.
Afriyie Ankrah said that, in the past, registrants had between 11 and 21 days to check for their name during exhibition of the register. He suggested it was not right for the EC to expect all Ghanaians to cross-check their data in just one week.
This was the shortest duration for a voter exhibition exercise since the 2012 elections, he said. “In 2012 when a new register was compiled, the duration for the exhibition exercise was 11 days (1 September to 10 September 2012).
“Even in 2016, where only limited registration was conducted in preparation for that year’s elections, the duration for the exhibition exercise was 21 good days (18 July to 7 August),” he said.
Tomorrow in Accra (24 September), Mahama is expected to speak about the “integrity challenges of the electoral process and unfolding events that threaten to undermine Ghana’s stability and democracy”, said a press statement by James Agyenim-Boateng, the chief 2020 campaign spokesman for the NDC flagbearer.
Read the statement here: Mahama-speaks-on-EC-processes-24.9.2020.
E A Alanore
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