Renowned investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni has described plans by the Electoral Commission of Ghana(EC) to compile a new voters’ register as a waste of resources and a threat to the county’s peace, stressing that managers of the commission who are determined to carry out this exercise, apparently to favour someone, will be remembered in the dishonourable pages of Ghana’s history.
The EC led by Jean Mensa, appointed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo are going ahead to compile a new voter roll despite widespread opposition to the effect that the exercise amounts to a waste of resources and time.
Not even the new threat of spreading the novel coronavirus has deterred the EC who, insists, the compilation of the new voter roll will begin in the latter part of next month.
The governing New Patriotic Party(NPP) seems to be the staunchest supporter of this move by EC, regularly explaining why there is the need to compile a new register.
In the view of Manasseh Azure Awuni, some pages of dishonour are reserved for those pushing this agenda:
“Mrs. Jean Mensa, Dr. Bossman Asare, the other EC Commissioners and all right thinking members of our society know that it’s not healthy to compile a new voters’ register with a few months to an election, when the temperature of the nation shoots beyond the roofs. The violence that characterised previous registrations and limited registrations should caution us. It doesn’t have to take Major Boakye Gyan’s words.
The economic devastation caused by Covid-19, and fact that the virus is still spreading should have restrained the EC and made them listen to the likes of Akoto Ampaw, who suggested to the Commission to use the existing register. Almost all civil society groups in Ghana unanimously kicked against the compilation of a new register. But it appears the EC is allergic to common sense and conventional wisdom. Or, rather, it is so blinded by the desire to do someone’s bidding that it’s unprepared to listen to anyone who doesn’t sing from the same hymn book.
I pray and hope they pull through this without compromising the security of our nation even though over a hundred million dollars is being flushed down the toilet at a time we went to beg from IMF to fight the pandemic.
But the architects of this should remember that they will find their names in the appropriate pages of our nation’s unwritten history — the inglorious pages,” he wrote on his Facebook page sighted by MyNewsGh.com.
Meanwhile the opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC) has sued the EC challenging their plan to compile a new register.
Source:MyNewsGh.com/Stephen Zoure/2020
