The Ketu South voters’ register argument being advanced by Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko and other NPP members is not new. It’s the same rehashed claim that Togolese have flooded the register in the Volta Region, a stronghold of the NDC.
It’s the reason the NPP agitated for a new register while in opposition. With that so-called “bloated” register, the NPP won massively. Strangely, it’s still not happy. The NPP is now in power. Charlotte Osei, who would have been a stumbling block to this new register agenda, has been removed. The NPP’s wish will be done at all costs.
Mrs. Jean Mensa, Dr. Bossman Asare, the other EC Commissioners and all right thinking members of our society know that it’s not healthy to compile a new voters’ register with a few months to an election, when the temperature of the nation shoots beyond the roofs. The violence that characterised previous registrations and limited registrations should caution us. It doesn’t have to take Major Boakye Gyan’s words.
The economic devastation caused by Covid-19, and fact that the virus is still spreading should have restrained the EC and made them listen to the likes of Akoto Ampaw, who suggested to the Commission to use the existing register. Almost all civil society groups in Ghana unanimously kicked against the compilation of a new register. But it appears the EC is allergic to common sense and conventional wisdom. Or, rather, it is so blinded by the desire to do someone’s bidding that it’s unprepared to listen to anyone who doesn’t sing from the same hymn book.
I pray and hope they pull through this without compromising the security of our nation even though over a hundred million dollars is being flushed down the toilet at a time we went to beg from IMF to fight the pandemic.
But the architects of this should remember that they will find their names in the appropriate pages of our nation’s unwritten history — the inglorious pages.