A senior lecturer in the department of history and political science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has described calls for an independent audit of the voters’ register as premature.
The National Democratic Congress on Thursday called for an independent audit of the new voters’ register, compiled by the Electoral Commission between 30 June and 8 August, which will serve as the basis of the December elections.
Potential interference
The NDC believes that a comprehensive audit will address its findings of false matches due to system failure during the pilot registration exercise.
But Mohammed Abass says the Electoral Commission is independent and must be allowed to complete the entire process before any such call is made.
He was speaking to Karen Dodoo on the Asaase Radio lunchtime news.
“We should all be concerned about the whole exercise because we want to get a credible register but we also have to be very careful because sometimes our interventions will be interference, thereby generating some tension which is not healthy for our democracy,” Dr Abass said.
“When the exercise is ongoing and you are in a hurry, everything done in a hurry can be termed as impatient. Whatever [complaints] you have, you can note them down, because it will all contribute to the success of the exercise. But being impatient is worrying,” he said.
It has always been a matter of some concern that Ghana’s electoral roll is bloated, he said; hence the need to monitor it carefully and ensure that the new register is as accurate as possible.
EC figures
On Wednesday the Electoral Commission announced that it had recorded nearly 17 million individuals so far in its mass voter registration exercise.
The initial projection made by the Commission before it began conducting the main exercise was 15 million. Over the 36 days of the principal exercise it registered 16,932,492 names and then recorded a further 30,814 people in a two-day mop-up exercise over last weekend, bringing the total to 16,963,306.
The chair of the Commission, Jean Mensa, announced the provisional figures at a press conference in Accra.
The Commission will now scrutinise the data and cleanse it of multiple registrations and questionable entries. The EC’s website puts the number of registered voters at 16,845,439.
Fred Dzakpata
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