Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu and Haruna Iddrisu
The Majority caucus in Parliament has accused its counterpart in the Minority of distorting facts during the Special Budget Committee meeting with the Electoral Commission (EC) as regards the upcoming voters’ registration exercise.
Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, at a news conference yesterday, pointed to a number of post-meeting statements made by the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, who, he said, presented “a distorted picture of the meeting and presentation made by the EC.”
The Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Tuesday had created the impression that the EC was phasing out 6,300 registration centres from the upcoming voters’ registration exercise.
Before the EC officials could come out of the meeting, Haruna Iddrisu rushed out and said, “The commission intends to phase out the registration exercise in some 6,300 registration centres out of the 33,000 registration centres across the country.”
“That troubles my heart because Article 42 will not be observed in essence… making available to Ghanaians a legitimate and guaranteed right that they are entitled to under Article 42,” he claimed.
Straightening Records
However, the Majority Leader indicated that the NDC Members of Parliament (MPs) deliberately twisted facts to suit its party’s agenda concerning the registration of voters.
He noted that such “deliberate distortion of facts” would not aid the improvement of the electoral process and urged the Minority Leader in particular not to ‘vitiate’ the atmosphere for the registration exercise.
“Let me say that at the very onset, we knew that our colleagues were going to twist and turn facts after our encounter with the EC. Perhaps, we should have allowed all of you (journalists) there,” he added.
Modern Equipment
According to him, the registration exercise has made it imperative for the EC to procure modernized and enhanced biometric registration equipment and verification devices and that MPs also interrogated the EC on the storage of the data to be collected.
“The Charlotte Osei commission indicated to us in 2016 that the equipment and other facilities there had expired and the commission was going to manage and that after the conduct of the 2016 elections they would have to overhaul the data centre,” he recounted.
$4m Annual Payment
Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said the current EC leadership submitted proposals to the Special Budget Committee that they intended to refurbish the data centre.
“The centre was being refurbished at great cost to the country. Since its construction in 2012, every year, at the time of Dr. Afari Gyan, the centre was being serviced at the cost of $4 million,” he indicated.
“So for the seven years the nation had to pay $28 million to the body that was charged with servicing. But it turned out that no servicing had been done all these years after the authentication of the system, and yet up to 2018 this country had to pay $28 million,” he added.
New Centre
The Majority Leader, who chairs the Special Budget Committee, said, “Remember, in the conduct of the 2016 general election, Charlotte Osei, Chairperson of the Commission, told this country that their system was being tinkling with – that is people were hacking into the system. There was no backup…The people who were managing the system for us said the centre needed refurbishment and Charlotte Osei told us $15 million would be needed to refurbish the old system.”
He added that “this new commission gives us indication that they want to construct a disaster recovery centre outside Accra. The new enhanced one is going to be constructed at the cost of $6.1 million plus an additional recovery centre at 1.3 million dollars totalling 7.4 million dollars. This is huge savings for the country.”
“The EC officials were summoned to the Special Budget Committee to justify requests for allocations and when they appeared they submitted their work programme. So we needed to interrogate their work programme, particularly in the election year, and the roadmap which will lead us to the conduct of the elections,” he said.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House