Ghana: Battle Lines Drawn For 2016 Elections
Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC) has released a statement
clarifying some of the issues that were held in contention after the previous
election in 2012 ahead of next year’s general poll. In a 4-point communiqué signed by the Acting Director of
Public Affairs, Christian Owusu-Parry, the EC revealed that it held fruitful
discussions with the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), a body made up of
representatives of all the political parties in Ghana and other stakeholders.
The report said the IPAC agreed to 29,000 polling stations,
rather than the 30,000 previously agreed upon, due to budget constraints. It
added that manual verification of voters would be introduced to support the
biometric system in the case of voters whose names may be in the register but
who may be ‘rejected’ by the biometric system.
“IPAC also accepted a working definition for ‘over-voting’,”
according to the statement. Per the new definition, “over-voting would be
deemed to have occurred where the number of ballots in the ballot box exceeds
the number of verified voters”.
Over-voting was one of the major issues raised by the
opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in its 2013 lawsuit of the EC and the
governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) which challenged the results that
ushered in John Mahama as president. According to the NPP, the EC accepted
results in certain polling stations where the number of voters did not tally
with the number in the register.
The statement also said the commission set up by the EC to
collate views on the electoral register and to make recommendations has
presented its report. The report, authored by a committee chaired by Justice
V.C.R.A.C Crabbe, will be studied and will impact whatever decision the EC
takes on the voters’ register going forward.
The NPP and some other bodies earlier called for a new
voters’ register citing bloating but the EC gave no direct indication of
compiling a new register before general elections in November 2016.
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