Politics of Tuesday, 9 July 2019

Source: peacefmonline.com

Asiedu Nketia sarcastically lauds EC’s 'planned confusion' registration exercise as 'successful'

Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary, NDC play videoJohnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary, NDC

The just ended Limited Voter Registration exercise undertaken by the Electoral Commission (EC) has been described by the General Secretary of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia as “planned confusion”.

To him, he will not be surprised if EC officials come out to beat their chest for a successful work done as they have achieved their aim of creating confusion in the exercise.

“This limited registration exercise, if the process can even be described as such, since the perfect word to call it is planned confusion. The EC officials have sat down to plan a way to conduct the exercise in a manner where there will be confusion in the limited registration and mess up the process”, he reiterated.

Speaking on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, the NDC Chief Scribe maintained that the EC did not really want the success of the exercise which was why they went ahead to use the wrong equipment when they had been strongly warned against the use of the online equipment for mass registration such as the limited registration.

“EC intentionally planned this confusion and they worked towards it gradually till they achieved their aim; you recall we (NDC) told them that the equipment they are using is outdated and they knew the equipment was obsolete and they went ahead to use it”.

“If the EC really wanted to achieve success in this exercise, will they have gone ahead to use the wrong equipment? We told them that the online equipment was not designed for this exercise; it is like dancing reggae to “kete” rhythm and so they are aware the online equipment is not designed for the limited registration exercise and yet, they went ahead to use them,” he stressed.

He further accused the EC of deliberately creating illogical registration centres to confuse the political parties in order not to get time to deploy their agents at the right time and to the right places to monitor the exercise.

“They planned it and went in with their open eyes to execute this exercise. Again, the guess work the EC used to set their target was different from the actual target from the Statistical Service which was 1.7 million Ghanaians qualified for the limited registration exercise but the EC insisted on using 300,000 people and later they settled on 500,000 and a day before the exercise the EC concluded on 700,000 registrants...”

“So if the EC has targeted to register only 700,000 people as against the Statistical Service projection of 1.7 million people then it means that those who were left in the queues are parts of the planned agenda to register only 700,000 people instead of the 1.7 million projections from Statistical Service. It is deliberate to exclude 1 million people if indeed the EC achieved its aim of the 700,000 people”.

“All these activities of the EC are deliberate plan which they know all of them will bring confusion in the limited registration exercise”, he asserted.