Former General Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC) Atik Mohammed has noted that the challenges encountered during the voter register exhibition exercise are a usual occurrence that helps the Electoral Commission (EC) to create a credible register, insisting that criticism from the National Democratic Congress(NDC) was needless.
The NDC, at a press conference lashed out at the EC for the numerous challenges voters encountered during the exhibition such as missing names and duplicated numbers.
Flagbearer of the NDC, John Mahama, who addressed the press conference stated that he will not accept results of a flawed election, calling on the EC to ensure the challenges are fully addressed.
For Mr Atik Mohammed the press conference was more about the NDC’s failure rather than the failures of the EC, noting that the challenges were not so extraordinary that the NDC needed to cut short its campaign to speak to.
“Given that all provisional registers produced after mass registrations cannot be faultless, the exhibition phase is intended to answer all identified challenges. To this end, like in all other exhibitions preceding the just ended one, some challenges were identified by the EC in respect of duplicate codes and some missing names among others…
“The former President created some hype around what he termed monumental and unprecedented failures of the EC, but in the end, all he could advise was that, the EC should rectify the challenges- a task that was half-way through at the time his overly hyped presser was held. If the former President knew his so called monumental problems were fixable, why didn’t he just admonish the EC to do so from wherever he was? Rather he staked a claim that, the nature of the challenges was such that he needed to suspend his campaign and return to Accra. I think later events have somewhat belied this claim and exposed the fact that, his return had more to do with campaign failures than the EC’s failures,” he stated.
He added that the commission deserves commendation rather than condemnation for the excellent work it is doing itself to ensure that it produces a credible register for the upcoming elections.
Atik Mohammed then urged all Ghanaians to help the commission overcome its challenges so that it can better execute its mandate.
“The process of producing a credible register is a shared responsibility. We owe it to ourselves and to our democracy, to help the EC succeed,” he emphasized.
Meanwhile chairperson of the EC has assured that it is doing all it can to ensure that it delivers a free fair and credible election come December 7.
