ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Ghana’s main opposition party held nationwide protests in regional capitals across the country on Tuesday, demanding a check of voter rolls for general elections scheduled for December.
Millions of supporters of the National Democratic Congress party, the country’s main opposition, took part in the protests, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, an NDC member of parliament, said in a live broadcast on TV3. The numbers could not be independently verified, but protests were held in all of Ghana’s 16 regional capitals, including the capital Accra.
“We are not asking for a big favour from the electoral commission, we are demanding our right to free and fair elections,” NDC chairman Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah told party members ahead of the protest march in Accra.
Ghana has held peaceful, free, fair and transparent elections for almost two decades. The general elections on December 7 will be the ninth consecutive election since the country returned to multiparty democracy in 1992.
But allegations of irregularities in this year’s voter rolls have raised concerns about a possible backsliding of democracy.
The NDC claims it has discovered thousands of unauthorised transfers and deletions of voters’ names from the electoral roll for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
The electoral commission said at a press conference last week that the opposition party’s call for a forensic investigation was “misplaced”.
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana are held simultaneously every four years. Current President Akufo-Addo is stepping down this year after his second and final four-year term.
Former President John Dramani Mahama of the NDC, who lost the 2016 and 2020 elections, will face Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia of the New Patriotic Party in this year’s elections
The protest march in Accra ended with the presentation of a petition to Parliament and the Electoral Commission. The petition calls for a bipartisan investigation into the conduct of the Electoral Commission, an independent forensic audit of the electoral register and the immediate publication of the audit findings once it is conducted.
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