The Electoral Commission has noted that the absence of the biggest opposition party from Wednesday’s Inter-party Advisory Committee meeting organised by the Commission took the shine out of the programme.

The NDC declined to attend the meeting which was chaired by the Deputy Chairperson of the Election Management Body, Samuel Tettey citing late invitation.

According to the NDC, it received the invitation to the meeting at 12:15 for a meeting which was to start at 1:00 pm.

A letter inviting the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) including the largest opposition party, the NDC read in parts: “On behalf of the Electoral Commission of Ghana, I am pleased to invite you to Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting on Wednesday 22nd August 2018. The time is 1:00 pm. The venue is the IPAC room of the Electoral Commission.”

The purpose of the IPAC meeting was to “discuss the 2018 limited Registration Exercise and the Referendum.”

Speaking to Starr News, the public relations officer of the commission Eric Dzakpasu said the presence of the NDC would have made the meeting and deliberations better.

“We would’ve wished all the parties were represented and then to raise their concern, in fact when I said the other parties were represented, it was not as if they were very comfortable with the arrangement,they raised this major concern that the notice was too short, they were not prepared, but then we also explained the time constraint relative to our program of activities and also apologised that moving forward things will be done properly as we use to do it .

“so we would have wished they had come to raise their concern then we explain and apologise as we did to the others. You know as the main opposition party, it took some bit of shine out of the meeting, out of the deliberations.

If they were around it would’ve been better but it’s rather unfortunate they were not around and we are sorry, we apologise,” he told Starr News’ Kwaku Obeng Adjei.