The New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) petition to the Electoral Commission on the voter register leading to the holding of stakeholders’ meeting last week, suddenly led to the resuscitation of comatose political parties.
Two of the parties which are technically dead but are still in the books of the Electoral Commission (EC), are the National Reform Party (NRP), founded by Goosie Tanoh and the EGLE Part, led by Owuraku Amofa. These two parties are surrogates of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and it (ruling party) uses them when it wants to swing a decision to its favour at the EC level.
While Owuraku Amofa has moved on to join the NDC and now aspiring to contest on the party’s ticket for Abuakwa South, the NRP’s Goosie Tanoh, who together with some disgruntled members of the NDC formed the party in 2002, has ceased to associate with the political grouping, leaving Dr David Percy as the sole member.
According to Dr Percy, an agriculturist with specialization in piggery, the Reform Party’s presence could be felt at the EC’s Inter Party Advisory Committee (IPAC). With no party executive and office to run the NDC break-away NRP, the comatose party, when given the opportunity on Friday – the last day of the forum to brainstorm on the incredible voter register – launched a scathing attack on the New Patriotic Party (NPP), describing its call for a new voter register as “mischief” aimed at creating chaos.
With the NPP leading the campaign for a new register, Dr. Percy said succumbing to the demands of the party (NPP) could be dangerous for Ghana’s democracy.
Dr Percy said the NRP believes the current register is credible, adding that the Electoral Commission is “robust” to deal with all challenges facing the electoral roll.
“We have managed to create a national crisis out of something that may be entirely a figment of somebody’s imagination,” Dr Percy said at the forum. He continued, “It cannot be the business of EC to address this kind of mischief.”
According to him, “If we don’t address what I will call the ‘elephant in the room’ we’ll come here and start addressing non-existent problems… We believe that the electoral system that we have now is robust and fully capable of addressing any problems that any parties may have, actual or imagined.
“It is time that we all took our collective heads out of the sand…”
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