GCPP Not Satisfied With Outcome Of Voters Reg. Exercise

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday, 14 August 2008

The Great Consolidated Popular Party says it is not satisfied with the outcome of the just ended voters registration exercise.

"If you take a critical look at the conduct of the Electoral Commission in this exercise you could see that it was incompetent and inconsistent," Glover Owusu, Publicity Secretary of the GCPP told the Times in an interview yesterday.

He said "from day one, it was very clear that a lot of eligible voters were going to be disenfranchised and the EC did not take any steps to rectify these problems".

He said as a result of the mishap, the EC should have extended the exercise to more than a week and not the two days that it could grant.

"The GCPP visited a lot of registration centres and witnessed long queues but it was very clear that a lot of the people are not going to get registered."

He said "complaints by registration officers about shortages of registration materials and the frustrations encountered by the people to be registered summed up how the EC messed up the whole exercise."

Mr Owusu further accused both the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress of compounding the EC’s problem in the exercise by causing confusion saying "the EC should have checked them".

"We are all preaching peace but looking at the two parties’ behaviour in the just ended exercise one does not need to tell the authorities to beef up our security for the main exercise in December."

He said many supporters who left the GCPP to join both the NDC and NPP are coming back to their fold saying "our flag-bearers’ popularity is soaring and we will make an impressive showing in December".

Asked whether the GCPP would be able to contest the December poll, following the EC’s declaration that it did not recognise the party’s national executives, Mr Owusu said "we are going to contest the election, our flag-bearer is filing his nomination in November."

He also accused the EC of an alleged sabotage of the efforts of Mr Dan Lartey the GCPP flag-bearer saying "in any event that we organise we send invitations to the EC and they do not honour the invitations".