General Secretary of the NDC, Asiedu Nketia
Even though many Ghanaians have lauded President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for boldly suspending all social gatherings, in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the National Democratic Congress holds a contrary view.
The leading opposition party says all the measures put in place by the President to contain the coronavirus outbreak are meant to rig the December general elections in favour of President Akufo-Addo and the governing New Patriotic Party.
“This whole announcement of emergency there, emergency here, stopping this gathering, in my view, on the surface will appear to the world that the President is acting to deal with covid-19 and so on.
“But the real intention is not to deal with covid-19 at all. The real intention is to find space to put the pieces of the rigging equipment together so that by the time anybody could say Jack, the election has been compromised,” NDC’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, is captured as saying.
Mr Nketia has been reprimanded by many Ghanaians who appear highly offended by his claims.
NDC runs to court
Meanwhile, after several failed attempts to get the Electoral Commission (EC) to kowtow to its demand not to compile a new voters’ register, the NDC has now commenced a legal action, seeking to stop the planned exercise.
In the suit filed at the Supreme Court, the NDC claims that the EC lacks the power to go ahead with the exercise.
The NDC, among other things, is seeking a “declaration that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 45(a) of the 1992 Constitution, 2nd Defendant (the EC) has the constitutional power to, and can, compile a register of voters only once, and thereafter revise it periodically, as may be determined by law. Accordingly, 2nd Defendant can only revise the existing register of voters, and lacks the power to prepare a fresh register of voters, for the conduct of the December 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.”
Voters’ ID card
In the writ filed by Godwin Kudzo Tameklo, lawyer for the NDC, the opposition party is also seeking an order to compel the EC to rescind its decision to bar the use of old voter ID cards as registration proof in the compilation of the new register. According to the party, the decision is baseless and in breach of the Constitution.
The writ is seeking a further declaration that the EC, “in purporting to exercise its powers, pursuant to article 51 of the 1992 Constitution, to exclude the existing voter identification cards from the documents required as proof of identification to enable a person register as a voter, without any justification, is arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable and contrary to article 296 of the 1992 Constitution.”
“Upon a true and proper interpretation of the Constitution, specifically, Article 42, the EC’s purported amendment of Regulation 1 sub-regulation 3 of the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2016 (C.I 91) through the Public Elections (Registration of Voters)(Amendment) Regulations, 2020, to exclude existing voter identification cards as proof of identification to enable a person apply for registration as a voter according to the NDC is unconstitutional, null and void and of no effect whatsoever,” it added.
Source: Daily Statesman
