Wednesday’s sitting, the 14th by the Committee to review challenged cases in the just-ended limited voter registration exercise was interrupted for hours due to disagreement between agents of the two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) requiring heavy Police presence to maintain order.
This followed one Mr Deku, a challenged applicant, who was cleared by the Committee and had his card released to him, much to the dissatisfaction of his challenger and NPP agent, Mr Dennis Gator, and his colleagues, and which infuriated their counterpart NDC agents, resulting in the commotion.
The NPP agents told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that District Electoral Commission (EC) Officer and the Ketu South DRRC failed in doing due diligence before clearing the said challenged person saying, theirs was to ensure a clean voter register for Ketu South to bar ineligible persons especially non-Ghanaian nationals from participating in the December polls.
“We realised an inconsistency in what the challenged applicant said regarding the house he claims to live in at Aveyiborme. Instead of the EC officer and the Committee doing further investigations, they voted among themselves and gave the card to him. Is one’s nationality determined through votes?”
The NDC agents on the other hand said the NPP agents during the limited voter registration process were on a “challenge spree” looking for the least opportunity to challenge any eligible applicant and that they were on a similar mission to disrupt the Committee’s sittings to disenfranchise people and that, they would not allow that to happen.
Mr Kofi Sakyi Boampong, the District EC Officer explained to the GNA that the Committee after reviewing the case against the said challenged applicant, its Chairman (now in the person of Mr Joseph Etse) said he should be cleared so, the card was released to him.
He denied any wrongdoing by the Committee in the case saying, where the challenger could not provide any evidence to prove the ineligibility of an applicant, the Committee had always taken a unanimous decision and in the absence of that, it resorted to voting.
Mr Boampong also bemoaned the “back and forth” which was hindering the Committee’s work saying, there were a total of 1,602 challenged applicants in the just-ended registration and after 13 sittings, only about 416 cases were dealt with, resulting in the release of 387 cards and retention of 29 with about 1,186 cases still pending.
He feared should the back and forth continue, some challenged applicants might not be given a fair chance at hearing as already, “the stipulated time for review of challenged applications was 4th June and we had to make a case for the extension of time for Ketu South because of the huge numbers involved.”
The Committee Wednesday began sitting at 0900hours but as at 1240hours, only four of the challenged cases were dealt with.
Mr Etse, the one replacing Torgbui Anubo IV, believed to be heeding medical advice to stay away from the Committee due to the stress involved, as the Chairman refuted allegations that he had proven to be a member of the NDC saying, “I don’t belong to any political party and I’m on this Committee only as a representative of Ghana Education Service.”
