Opinions of Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Columnist: Kusi, Duncan

Political parties should put pressure on electoral commission

It seems our political parties are becoming reluctant on their own environment. We begin a journey with a step and the journey can begin today.

It is obvious that the Electoral Commission is not up to date when you visit its website. There are some people who are no more working with the commission but their names and contact numbers are still found there.

Those people were found at strategic positions to disseminate information and communicate with the public effectively and in view of this, it is unlikely to gather the necessary and accurate information from Electoral Commission's since they are no more working with the EC.

Recently, I visited the website of EC to find out the number of current registered voters on just ended registration exercise but I could not found anything there.

I was compelled to call regional directors of the electoral commission but none of them was able to disclose that information so one advised me to contact the head of office for that.

Many calls were made to various departments at the head offfice of EC but nobody responded, finally I contacted one of their officers and the officer told me that she is on retirement for the past two years and even wondered why her name is still found on the website.

This means that EC is not up to date so I am urging all the parties to put pressure on the EC to update its website so that people can access the needed information.

I strongly urge all political parties in the country especially "NPP" to put pressure on the EC to publish the number of registered voters in every region for posterity other than that there would be another court going.

To avoid any court actions, the parties should wake up now before it would be too late.

Thank you.