New Voters Register: We Didn’t Have Extensive Discussion - John Boadu

General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu says the new voters register communique from the Electoral Commission (EC) was just a passing comment which was not extensively discussed at the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting.

The Electoral Commission (EC) in a statement after the meeting said, “the Commission will compile a new voters register ahead of the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.”

Key amongst some of the plans ahead of the general election is a new Constitutional Instrument (CI) to assess and guide the financial positions of the various political parties.

"The Commission is preparing a draft Constitutional Instrument to regulate and streamline the format of Financial Returns and Audited Accounts of the Political Parties,” the statement added.

But John Boadu reacting to the EC’s statement on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show insisted the new voters register issue was not extensively discussed at the IPAC Meeting; though there was a mention of it by the EC that “it is likely we are going to compile a new voters register”.

It is due to such misunderstanding and misrepresentation that John Boadu said he had proposed to the EC to immediately write a statement after the meeting for all the political parties to be sure of the exact issues captured during the meeting.

“We have been asking the EC to write statements immediately after every meeting for the parties to have the opportunity to look at the statement before it comes out, to avoid the issue of political parties coming out with different issues out of the same meeting they attended,” he stated.

He stressed that the idea of the EC issuing a statement immediately after IPAC meetings is due to the fact that sometimes the NDC don’t bring their General Secretary and Chairman for the meetings which normally create problems as decisions accepted by those who come to represent them at the meeting differ from the position of the General Secretary.

“ . . so when those people come and accept the decision taken, then you will see the General Secretary saying something different the next day. That is another aspect which I think that going forward, we need to also check so that we will know that if they are bringing someone to represent the party, that person will come and speak the mind of the party and nothing else," John Boadu said.