(Bloomberg) — Ghana’s main opposition party launched a nationwide protest on Tuesday, demanding a forensic examination of the voter register before the Dec. 7 election.
Most read from Bloomberg
The protests, dubbed “Enough is Enough,” allege that the National Democratic Congress party has discovered thousands of unauthorized transfers and deletions of voter names without prior consent.
“We have never seen this before in our democratic history, where registered voters have their names deleted or transferred to remote regions of the country without the consent of the individual voters,” NDC spokesperson Sammy Gyamfi said in an interview before the march. “We are asking the Electoral Commission to allow all political parties and stakeholders to select IT experts to work with the EC IT experts to audit the systems and the register so that we can have a credible role.”
According to Gyamfi, illegal voter transfers added more than 243,000 names, of which 3,957 were fraudulently deleted without prior notice.
Former President John Dramani Mahama and NDC flagbearer, who lost to President Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2016 and 2020 elections, will face Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party in this year’s elections. Akufo-Addo will step down after his second and final four-year term.
Gyamfi called on development partners such as the US, the UK and the United Nations Development Programme to intervene and ensure that the EC addresses these concerns so that the peace and stability that the West African country has enjoyed since 1992 is not jeopardised.
“The commission has addressed all the concerns raised by the NDC on the voters’ register,” Bossman Asare, an EC vice-chairman in charge of corporate affairs, said by telephone on Tuesday.
At a press conference last week, the commission said the NDC’s call for a forensic investigation was “misplaced”.
“The Commission firmly believes that the surest way to achieve a robust and credible register is not through demonstrations,” Samuel Tettey, the Commission’s Vice-President for Operations, said on September 12.
Millions of party supporters took part in the march across the country, MP Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said in a live broadcast on TV3 in Accra. “We will continue to protest until our demands are met,” he said.
The march in the capital Accra ended with the presentation of a petition to Parliament and the European Commission.
(Updated with the presentation of the petition in the last paragraph.)
Most read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg LP
