The National Democratic Congress (NDC) never ceases to amaze me and fellow Ghanaians. They say shamelessly that His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo lied his way to power during the 2016 electioneering campaign. This is an unforgivable insult to the intelligence of Ghanaians who voted massively for him. Why belittle the intelligence of the people? Can’t they distinguish between falsehood and truth? Are Ghanaians missing their incompetent and greedy ex-President Mahama and are clamouring for him to come back? To come back for what? To mismanage the economy and to put us back into ‘dumsor’ again? They must be living in a cuckoo’s land.
They forget that President Akufo-Addo beat them by over one million votes, a humiliating defeat unprecedented in the annals of Ghanaian politics. They didn’t have any persuasive message to sell to the electorate. While His Excellency Akufo-Addo was outlining his plans for ‘planting for food and jobs’, ‘one district one factory’, ‘one village one dam’, ‘one million dollars for every constituency’ for developmental purposes, the creation of NABCO to absorb the teeming unemployed graduates, nursing and teacher training allowances, Zongo Development Fund—many of which promises have been fulfilled and a few others are in the process of being fulfilled—they were busy whistling and outstretching their arms like Usain Bolt shooting into the skies with a catapult in self-delusion of coming into power again. Now they’ve got what they deserved—a slap in the face by Ghanaians in the 2016 general elections who they now believe want them back in 2020.
Now they say they don’t want a compilation of a new voters’ register. They prefer the old one which is full of irregularities as many people used the National Health Insurance card to register as ruled by the Supreme Court in the Abu Ramadan case. What are they afraid of? Will a new register impact negatively on their electoral fortunes? Is that why they don’t want it? Did many of their supporters use the NHIS card to register?
Another fallacy of theirs is that because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is not safe to register people, including the millions of people who have now reached 18 years and are eligible to vote until the pandemic is over. Who can tell the duration of the pandemic? Because of the pandemic, should all political and economic activities be allowed to grind to a halt if only people would not to be stubborn and stick strictly to the protocols announced by government?
They forget that we now have 16 regions and not 10 anymore which require the allocation of new codes for the new regions, which therefore necessitate the compilation of a new register to take account of the new regions in order not to disenfranchise anybody.
They also say that they will not accept the results of the 2020 general elections if they see that theprocesses leading to the elections are flawed, but it is precisely for this reason that a compilation of a new voters’ register is necessary/to remove those irregularities the retention of which will make the election results flawed and not credible.
The NDC cannot have their cake and eat it at the same time. They should allow the EC to carry out its constitutionally-mandated duty to compile a new register if and when it deems fit. They also forget that the bio-metric verification machines are old and outlived their usefulness.
I think the NDC are confused. They don’t have any message that can persuade the electorate to vote for them and should be rejected outright come December 7, 2020.
By Kwesi Krafona