General News of Thursday, 26 May 2016

Source: classfmonline.com

Voter registration: USAG to sue EC

EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei

The University Students Association of Ghana (USAG) is set to take the Electoral Commission (EC) to court for failing to extend the limited registration exercise for tertiary students despite several calls for it to do so.

Several university students from the University of Ghana (UG), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Cape Coast (UCC) and the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), could not register during the limited registration exercise because they had only one centre on their campuses, which could not cater for the numbers there.

A call by the students and their leaders for the EC to extend the period of registration and set up more centres on the campuses went unheeded.

Speaking to Class News, USAG President Henry Nkosuo Boakye said the Association is ready to inform the EC officially about its intended strike suit on Friday May 27 and go to court on Monday May 30.

“We are still on course, we have never dreamt of rescinding our decision. As I speak to you now, our lawyer wanted to meet these students one-on-one , make himself known to them and let them get to the know that he was going to represent them in court” he stated.

“As it stands now he has met a good number of these students and we are still working on the others. The only challenge is the students are in their examination week, so, in no time [maybe] by tomorrow, a letter will be served to the Electoral Commission and by Monday, we will hit the law court.

“We want the EC to be aware that this is our decision and this time round, it is going to be a letter from the lawyer. Once they receive the letter from our lawyer, then they should know this is our decision, so when it gets to court it would not look as if it was an ambushed thing but this time round they will know we served them, but they decided to ignore our [pleas]”, Mr Boakye said.