<<Print>>The General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has dismissed evidence produced by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to back claims the electoral roll is bloated.
Mr. John Asiedu Nketia said the NPP is noted for fabricating evidence to back spurious claims. He was reacting to contents of a press conference called by the leadership of the NPP to reveal what they called a smoking gun.
As part of efforts to ratchet up pressure on the Electoral Commission ((EC) to compile a new voters’ register, the NPP said it has found 76,000 Togolese on Ghana’s electoral roll.Vice-presidential nominee of the party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, told journalists “our investigative team obtained the Togo voters register...and using facial biometric recognition technology, the system has found 76,286 potential matches of the same people, with the same names and faces on the Ghanaian as well as Togolese voters’ registers.”
But reacting to the claims on Joy FM, Mr Asiedu Nketia said, the NDC is not bothered at all about the claims because “NPP is known to have in the past engaged in fabrication and misrepresentation to achieve what they wanted.”
He said the opposition party is just blowing hot air and when they subjected to strict proof, their evidence will evaporate.”
The NDC Chief scribe questioned the credibility of the NPP’s allegations, pointing out that the Togolese voters’ register Dr. Bawumia referred to has nothing proving it is indeed a Togolese voters’ register.
“Knowing them for what they are, they are capable of doing anything so we are not bothered at all,” he quipped.
Even if it was proven that there are Togolese nationals on Ghana’s electoral roll, Asiedu Nketia argued, that in and of itself is not sufficient basis to request that a new register be compiled.The rules allow the NPP to pick up challenge forms and demand proof from the persons involved that they are Ghanaians and are legally entitled to vote in Ghana.
Touching on Dr Bawumia's assertions that the increases in the voter population in some constituencies raise questions, Asiedu Nketia said the allegation was flippant.
He said a 50 percent increase in voter population over four years does not surprise him at all because economic activities can lead to migration from place to another which can have a profound effect on the number of people registering in one constituency.
He said the NPP leaders “are behaving like JHS students who have forged answers and are looking for a formula that will lead them to those answers.”A member of the team of NPP investigators that put the evidence together, Mr. OB Amoah, said the evidence produced Tuesday was a tip of the iceberg.
He said the NPP was in possession of the original Togolese voters’ register except that the evidence was extracted from that and presented to the public.
If the NDC wants that, the NPP will gladly make it available.
Mr. Amoah said a lot more revelations will be made in the coming days.
The NPP Tuesday presented its evidence to the elections governing body, the Electoral Commission, demanding the compilation of a new register.
The party’s flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, quoted President John Mahama as encouraging the Togolese authorities to delay that country’s elections and take steps to ensure that concerns raised by the opposition there were comprehensively dealt with. The president made the intervention as ECOWAS Chairman.