Member of Parliament (MP) for the Adansi Asokwa Constituency, Kobina Tahir Hammond has lashed out at the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for mounting a resistance to the Electoral Commission’s (EC’s) decision to compile a new voters’ register.
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He argues the opposition party knows it “cannot get
more than 10 votes in any election in Ghana if a new electoral roll is
built”, reason it is going about protesting against the EC’s plan.
But he blames the NDC’s audacity of resistance against
“every beautiful initiative in Ghana” on the current government’s
failure to put “corrupt” functionaries of the previous administration
behind bars, three years after assuming power.
“If they had been jailed for all the money that they
stole, they wouldn’t be going about badmouthing the EC; but we in the NPP have
a good heart, otherwise, all of these people should have been jailed one by one
for them to see their real sizes”, KT Hammond told journalists at Adansi
Asokwa on the sidelines of a party meeting.
He said the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu
Nketiah should have been the first person to be jailed, before the others would
follow suit; “as for him, I would have personally bundled his hands and
legs together, carry him on my shoulders and throw him into prison; those
people are thieves and the blood of Satan runs through their veins, except only
20 of them who are my friends”.
The opposition NDC have questioned the morale behind the
EC’s decision to compile a new register when it has not adequately given reasons
to the Ghanaian people as to why it has become imperative.
Johnson Asiedu Nketia has called the move
“senseless” and “meaningless” and has threatened to
“pump” some sense into the head of the EC boss if she insists on
building a new register.
“Whatever it takes to pump a little sense into the
heads of Jean Mensa and her cabal, we will do it”, he said at the first of
a series of demonstrations dubbed ‘Tikusayi’, organized by the political
parties against the new register in Tamale last week.
The NDC and its friends are also set to march on Kumasi
against the EC’s plan on Tuesday in the ‘y3nnpene’ demonstration.
The opposition party and its allies are however not alone in
the fight against the new voters register.
On Thurday, a coalition of eighteen civil society
organizations also kicked against the EC’s plan.
“In summary, the EC does not seem to have undertaken a
comprehensive assessment to ascertain that an entirely new system is a Hobson’s
choice. We, therefore do not support the proposal for a new voters register by
the EC”, the coalition said in a press statement.
But governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and twelve other
political parties say they support the EC as long as it does not flout the law
in its bid to get a new register for the 2020 polls.
The Electoral Commission insists the current register is fraught with blemishes and that among other weaknesses, it lacks control over the source code to the country’s biometric data.
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“It is highly unwise on our part to continue to run a
solution we do not have control over and this will be a huge risk to the
country and it is akin to us giving our sovereignty to a vendor”, Deputy
EC Chair in charge of Operations, Samuel Tettey has said.
Source:MyNewsGh.com/Teddy Brown Onimbede/2020
