Asiedu Nketia, the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has alleged that the Electoral Commission (EC)’s decision to suspend its scheduled compilation of a new voters’ registration exercise is not as a result of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic but the commission is not ready for the exercise.
“The use of COVID-19 as a reason to call off the exercise is a cover-up, the reason why the exercise cannot come on as planned is, equipment needed for registration has delayed,” he said.
TheEC insisted it suspended the planned exercise initially scheduled for April 18, 2020, because of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Speaking to journalists after an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting, Dr Serebour Quaicoe, the Director of Electoral Services at the EC, said it was collaborating with health experts to decide on favourable date depending on prevalence rate of the virus.
“We had planned to do the registration on April 18 however because of the pandemic, we can’t do it on the said date, we are observing what is happening, we told them the registration exercise was not going to be possible on April 18 before the outbreak of COVID-19 because of procurement of equipment,” Dr Quaicoe stressed.
However, the commission did not mention a new date for compilation of the new electoral roll since the new date was dependent on how long the coronavirus pandemic lasts.
But John Boadu, the General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), justified the decision by the EC to suspend compilation of the new voters’ registration exercise and indicated that it was necessary to ensure safety of the citizenry hence the reason to suspend the exercise saying “ all of us are faced with the challenge, we need to work as a people to reduce the spread of disease, they think it is important to adhere to requirements given by the President and pray we’ll be able to contain it.
According to Mr Nketia, the equipment couldn’t have arrived in the country before April 18, but found convenient excuse under COVID-19 as cover and maintained that “the actual reason is not about COVID-19, they are not ready.
“Even in a situation where there was no COVID-19 the equipment was not going to enter the country before April 18, it is poor planning, they should not hide under COVID-19 because other activities of the commission have been ongoing on the field,” he posited. -citinewsroom.com
