The stance of Justice VCRAC Crabbe, chairman of the panel on the voter register, is already known. He is against a new electoral roll as he said earlier.
For such a personality who publicly asked the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to take advantage of the opening of the register and have it cleaned to be bestowed with such a responsibility is to reduce the whole exercise into a laughing stock.
There is no denying the fact that this elderly man, his white beard – a mark of venerability in our traditional homes – notwithstanding, is singing from the same hymn book as Charlotte Osei and those who played a role in his choice for the useless assignment.
As a nonagenarian, we are hard-pushed not to accord him the respect he deserves, such men laden with wits. But considering his hurried pronouncement on the voter register before an IT audit, we can only wonder what has descended upon him.
The deal is to prolong matters. Organise this joke of a forum with the aggrieved stating their cases, if they decide to turn up at all for the time-wasting exercise. This will definitely be followed by a discrediting of the hard-gotten evidence by the so-called experts and perhaps a bout of opaque cleaning of a register so badly compromised that only a replacement can give it the desired respect.
One of the members of the group has interesting and tell-tale entries in his curriculum vitae. From the time he taught members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) some electoral tricks to holding clandestine meetings with power brokers, he has proven beyond reasonable doubt where his political allegiance is and his readiness to bend the rules to give advantage to his side of the divide.
It would look like the importance of the credibility of the voter register is still being underrated by those who are responsible for ensuring this quality.
Even before the Crabbe-led panel manages to have the aggrieved parties assemble for the charade called to discuss the constraints of the voter register, it has failed to command the deference of a cross-section of Ghanaians – an important prerequisite for its decisions to command respect.
Charlotte and her employer must understand that none of their programmes intended to delay the process has escaped the scrutiny of people versed in electoral tricks and how to thwart them.
The more the EC and the ruling party apparatchiks kick against the replacement of the register, the more it becomes palpable that there is the need to push ahead.
It is interesting hearing so-called masters of election matters dismissing the possibility of the NPP boycotting the panel’s sitting. We find this rather lacking sense. Since it is the party which put the issue of the discredited voter register on the front burner, its refusal to attend the panel sittings matters a lot.
An election that is bereft of credibility as a result of a discredited register is not worth undertaking in the first place at all, and can only push the country to the precipice.
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