THE OPPOSITION New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region yesterday stormed the Electoral Commission (EC) regional office in Kumasi to protest over the snail-pace at which the continuous registration was being conducted in the city.
Led by Bernard Antwi Boasiako aka Wontumi, the Ashanti Regional Chairman, Mac Manu, National Campaign Manager of the NPP and other top gurus, the NPP alleged that the EC was intentionally slowing down the pace of the exercise to disenfranchise more people in the region.
Wontumi, who addressed the media during a press conference held at the compound of the EC’s regional office at Denyame, charged the EC to increase its staff and equipment for the registration exercise in the city.
He said the EC’s decision to combine about five constituencies with a single biometric machine was not appropriate as it was causing the undue delay, noting that people who want to register in the city were getting frustrated by the slow process.
Wontumi said if the EC continued to carry out the important exercise at that slow pace, definitely most potential registrants would be denied their constitutional right of getting their names into the electoral roll so that they could also decide who should steer the affairs of the state.
The NPP regional chairman observed that the machines being used to register the people were too slow, suggesting that the EC should with immediate effect, replace them with new ones that could operate faster, adding that the NPP was only demanding fairness.
Wontumi said his protest was not meant to favour the NPP, explaining that he was only fighting for every Ghanaian who had attained the voting age of 18 so that they could perform their civic right of voting during the national polls, as mandated by the Constitution.
Mr Peter Mac Manu also expressed the same concern and appealed to the EC to add more hands so that the process could be quickened to ensure that nobody was disenfranchised in the December 7 polls.
The Deputy Ashanti Regional EC Director, Lucas Yiryel, countered the claim that the EC was deliberately delaying the registration process in Kumasi to deny some people the opportunity to register, noting that the EC was doing the right thing, so far as he was concerned.
According to him, the EC was using online registration system which could detect people that want to register twice and also add details of new registrants into the national data hence, the delay.
FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi