'NDC have something to lose with new voters register'

A Political Scientist, Dr. Richard Amoako Baah, says the ruling National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) vehement opposition to the findings of the New Patriotic Party (NDC) about the country’s voters register is making him to believe that the umbrella family has something to hide.

In an interview on Kasapa 102.3 FM on Wednesday, Dr. Baah said he was expecting the NDC to have presented a well researched report to counter the claims of the NPP about the infiltration of foreigners in Ghana’s voters register among other things other than to strongly maintain their stance on the current register.

He said should the Electoral Commission decides to create a new voters register; it is the country that stands to benefit because there wouldn’t be claims of cheating from any political party.

“The NPP have brought out their findings with pictures but you say their research is a fabrication – are you saying they fabricated the pictures? At least you also have to go and investigate it yourself and present your opposing findings. But when you have not done that, and you go ahead to shoot down their findings, it tells me something. So, it looks like the NDC have something to lose when they do a new voters register.”

“When you do that it means you have something to cane by keeping the old record because after all if you have a new voters register, nobody has an advantage. When you defend the old one this way, it means you have an advantage and that when a new one comes on board, you will lose that advantage. And I am more inclined to think that that is the situation looking at the way Asiedu Nketia is reacting,” he noted.

The NPP has for some time been calling for a new Voters Register for the 2016 general elections stating among other things that current data lacked credibility because it is fraught with ghost names and foreign nationals who are resident in the country.

On Tuesday, the party, led by its Vice Presidential candidate, Dr. Mahumudu Bawumia, buttressed their argument by revealing that the current voters register is flooded with 76,286 Togolese nationals whose identity were also found in the Togo Voters Register.

The figure, he noted, forms part of the 10% work done in using facial biometric recognition technology to compare the Voters Register of Ghana to Togo. Other neighbouring countries such as Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina are also in the pipeline.

However, the NDC in a sharp rebuttal dismissed the claims put forth by the 2016 Vice Presidential candidate of the NPP.

General Secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) Johnson Asiedu Nketia said the NPP’s call for a replacement of the alleged compromised voters register, is a ploy to find an excuse for its imminent defeat at the 2016 polls.

He described the NPP’s claims as baseless, adding that the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition has resorted to the strategy of finding fault, as a face-saving exercise as the party sees defeat glaringly staring at it in the face.

“They know they are about to lose the 2016 elections, and they shudder to think of such defeat. This will be three consecutive defeat for the NPP. They never do anything wrong but blame others. They did same in the 2012 elections blaming the EC, and also STL for intercepting election results when their allegations were verified by a team from the African Union, it proved false. Till date, there are still people who believe that innocent company really did what the NPP claimed”.

The Political Scientist commenting further told Owusu Adjei that the argument advanced by the NDC is not constructive enough to maintain the current voters register.

“If they backed their argument to the cost involve in having a new register and the fact that the country has no money to do it that is acceptable.”