General News of Friday, 12 June 2020

Source: happyghana.com

Civil Society organization calls on CID to investigate EC boss

Jean Mensa, EC Chairperson Jean Mensa, EC Chairperson

The Executive Secretary of “Care “Ghana, David Kumi Addo has registered the group’s displeasure over the Electoral Commission’s decision to compile a new voters’ register.

Addressing the media on the subject, Mr Kumi said “one of the weakest arguments advanced by EC is that the names of about 600,000 dead persons are in the old register. Perhaps, they have forgotten that the register is a biometric one with fingerprints of voters and other unique details. Obviously making it impossible for dead men to vote. The question asked is how then can a dead person exhume her/his own grave and join a queue to vote?”

According to him, the belligerence and adamance of the Electoral Commission has created a tinderbox out of Ghana, which security experts and other stakeholders have noticed and cautioned the EC to check.

Moreover, he feels the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and it’s allied groups are the one’s urging the EC on their slippery slope.

Addressing the press, Mr Kumi made mention that they have followed the arguments of the EC and the cases upon which it wants to discard a biometric register which has produced two presidents, H.E John Dramani Mahama in 2012 and H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2016 including members of parliament is invalid.

David Kumi believes the only reason the EC wants to improve upon its technology is to add facial recognition as a tool of identification. And even that is the poorest form of security as compared to the already existing fingerprint feature in use.

He argued that, the decision made by Jean Mensah and the EC to go ahead and register over one million voters a couple of months into election 2020, when she knows the register will not be needed is a deliberate move to cause financial loss to the state. “The CID should investigate her with immediate effect,” he said.