The provisional voter register for the general elections scheduled for December 7 will be made available to political parties on Friday, August 16, the Electoral Commission (EC) has said.

The announcement follows a demand made by the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), for the provisional register to be made available immediately.

The delay was condemned by Dr. Omane Boamah, the NDC's Director of Elections, who blamed it on the EC's incapacity and a calculated attempt to give political parties a substandard register.

Boamah warned that the NDC and other stakeholders are at risk of potentially dire consequences as a result of the delay and are “deeply concerned that the posturing and incompetence of the EC and its IT Department can plunge Ghana into anarchy if not remedied immediately.”

But the EC's Director of Training, Dr. Serebuor Quaicoe, confirmed on Eyewitness News that the organization must legally compile the provisional register no later than ninety days following the data collection from the registration process.

“If you look at regulation 22 of the C1 91, they say that the commission has 90 days to compile the provisional register after gathering the data or doing the registration, and we all know that technically we’ve seen the data gathering which was on the 3rd.”

“…Initially we had not planned to do the mop-up. But once we decided to do the mop-up, it means that we have to complete the compilation before we can give the list out, and as I said, as far as the law is concerned, we have 90 days after compilation.

“So, we are within the law, but we told them we are going to give it to them, and we wrote to them again that they will have it today, but we couldn’t complete it, so we said that Friday, God willing, they will have it, so we will give it to them on Friday,” he stated in a report by citinewsroom.com.

KA/EK