NPP registration monitoring team complete exercise

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) voters registration monitoring team has completed a nationwide monitoring tour of registration centres, especially centres in and around  border towns.

The team, led by the National Chairman, Mr Paul Afoko, and  the General Secretary, Mr Kwabena Agyepong, familiarised  themselves  with the  limited registration exercise  which ended yesterday.

 The regions which the team visited included the Western, Volta, Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions, where there were media reports of electoral irregularities as  unidentified people destroyed  biometric registration machines and materials meant for the registration.

While in the Western Region, Mr Afoko and his team  visited Tarkwa Nsuaem, the Nzema East Municipality, the Ellembelle, Ahanta West and Jomoro districts following alleged complaints from the regional executive of the NPP about registration irregularities.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mr Afoko said the aim of his team was to experience at first-hand the concerns being raised by the regional representatives and ensure that the voter registration exercise was not marred with irregularities.

“My focus is on the border towns where we are likely to have non-Ghanaians taking part in the registration exercise and having their names in the voters register,” he said.

Concerns

The national chairman said the NPP was regarding the limited voter registration exercise as the “first step to winning the 2016 general election and we will make sure the register is credible.”

He said the exercise was good for the country’s young democracy as the country prepared to put its democratic credentials to test once more during district assembly elections and the 2016 general election.

On his rounds, he alleged that some of the officials at the registration centres were accepting unapproved identity cards to register people, while certain government officials were also meddling in the registration process.

He said other registration centres did not have printers as theirs had been given to other centres, adding, “Some of us regard this as a deliberate attempt to prevent some of our members from registering.”

“I will make an official complaint to the Electoral Commission (EC) to address some of the irregularities I witnessed during  our tour of registration centres in the region,” he stated.

In the Volta Region,  NPP sources said the turnout was low  as people were still waiting to register next year when the voters register would be finally reopened for registration, particularly towards the 2016 elections.

The source said  the visit, which took  the monitoring  team to constituencies such as Akatsi South, Akatsi North, Ho central, Ho West, Keta, Ketu North and Ketu South in the Volta Region, revealed a great level of apathy among the residents towards the limited registration exercise.

It said the residents expressed disappointment at  the manner in which they were treated by their elected officers, saying after electing them into office, the regional executives and district officers of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had failed to pay regular visits to the grass roots, who helped them to win power.

The indifference towards the limited registration, according to the source, pointed to the dissatisfaction among the residents in the region, which is often referred to as the “World Bank” of the NDC when it comes to elections in the country.

The source asserted that because of the disappointment, the youth had relaxed and adopted the  let-us-wait-and-see attitude, preferring to register next year when the exercise would be conducted again, hoping that their standard of living would then have seen some improvement.

For example, the NDC  won all the  seats in the Volta Region,  including  Nkwanta North, “the only one held by the NPP and after all this hard work, the region has been neglected,” the source noted.