NPP CONCERNED OVER 2 DAY SPECIAL VOTING

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Monday, December 05, 2016

The opposition New Patriotic New Patriotic Party (NPP) has expressed grave concern about the way in which the Electoral Commission (EC) handled the Special Voting reserved for security agents, EC staff and media practitioners who will be on duty on December 7.

Acting NPP General Secretary John Boadu, who released the statement yesterday, bemoaned the EC’s approach in solving the emerging problems.

“They were avoidable and bizarre errors that had compelled the commission to embark on an unprecedented second day of special voting.

He said the NPP had received information from credible sources within the commission that there might be a grand scheme to adjourn the general elections beyond Wednesday, December 7, saying “that would be a total disaster.”

“We will demand from the EC to give the greatest assurance to the nation by Monday that there will be no adjournment of polls after 5pm on December 7,” he said.

He said “the second day of voting is a probable plot to create confusion and avenues for manipulating the general elections, saying “We have read reports where security personnel, professionals trained in the art of discipline are expressing violent anger over their names been missing, frustrating them from voting. We do not want to imagine how bad things could get if this was repeated on December 7. We need the greatest assurance from the EC that this mess shall not be revisited on us on Wednesday.”

Mr Boadu, who is also the Director of Operations of the NPP campaign, stated that “the EC presented us with the complete register a while back, but it did not come up with the special lists, as well, as required by law. It took them days after our persistent requests before they supplied us with what we thought was the full lists of the Special Voters, Proxies etc. To our surprise, this was not the case as they kept updating the lists even after that, ending with this mess.”

He said, “We will not accept any situation where this mess is carried into the main voting exercise on Wednesday.”

“Everything must be done for every voter who shows up at the polling station before 5pm to vote. Again, nothing must be done to allow those who voted early or were listed to vote early to vote. We will not entertain any situation where the mess is carried forward to December 7.”