<<Print>>President John Mahama has called on political parties to stop harassing the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission and rather cooperate with it to purge the voters register.
President Mahama was speaking on Radio BAR in the Brong Ahafo Region today [Thursday] as part of activities lined up for his “Accounting to the People tour.” “We have some political parties that have a tradition of haranguing and just harassing the commission and I think that must stop.
Leave the commission in peace to do its work, it’s done it before, so let them do the work,” he charged. Some pressure groups including the opposition New Patriotic Party have over the months mounted pressure on the Chairperson of Electoral Commission to implement some of the reforms recommended by the Supreme Court for the upcoming general elections credible and transparent.
But According to President Mahama the best platform to get the issues addressed is at the Inter Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings. On the ongoing limited voter registration exercise, President Mahama urged the political parties to ensure that they monitor the process and also help the commission remove ghost names from the register. “They [EC] are going to do the limited registration and after that the register will be exhibited and the point is, every political party at the branch level must take their copy of the exhibited register and assist the Electoral Commission to remove the names of dead people from the register.
That is the best that we can do for now.” “We have IPAC, all concerns that parties have they are supposed to take to IPAC. You go to IPAC, you discuss the issue with the electoral commission and the commission takes the consensus of the majority. So if you alone disagree, it must be your wheel or the highway so then you take your issue from IPAC and come outside and take to the streets in manifestations and all that. I don’t think it’s really necessary,” he added.