The Electoral Commission (EC) has stated that it is yet to be furnished with the voters’ register of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) with less than three days to its presidential and parliamentary elections.
It explained that the agreement was that the party was expected to submit the register and the ballot papers at least a week to the elections however, the national executives of NDC had failed to do so.
“Till the injunction on the party’s primaries are lifted the Commission has withdrawn from offering its services,” EC said.
DrSerebourQuaicoe, Director of Electoral Services at the EC, who made this known, explained that it was to avoid such situations the commission urged the party to submit its voters’ register early for all challenges to be addressed timeously.
According to him, such issues should have been made available weeks ago, because the EC knew when such issues were completed people petitioned and the Commission was thinking “if we had gotten it early enough, they would have addressed any challenges that may come out of it.
There have been instances where we will go for the election and at the venue of the election the register will be brought to you and you may have to be making calls so that whilst you are conducting the election new names will be added and subtracted,” Dr Quaicoe bemoaned.
He intimated that such issues should be lesson to political parties when they take decisions ahead of time so as to avoid having challenges in registers.
The injunction case will be heard today, a day to the scheduled May 13, 2023 Election Day and currently, scheduled date for the primaries is at risk of being rescheduled following an injunction filed by an NDC presidential aspirant, DrKwabenaDuffuor, who insists that the voters’ register submitted to his team contains discrepancies.
However, the EC after it met agents of all the three flagbearer hopefuls of the NDC was served with an Application for Interlocutory Injunction seeking to restrain the Commission from supervising conduct of presidential and parliamentary primaries due to alleged anomalies with the register.
Jean Mensa, Chairperson of the EC, indicated thatin order that it was not cited for contempt, it took the decision not to supervise conduct of the elections until after determination of the suit by the High Court.
