The Volta regional secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress Mr. James Gunu has accused the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Madam Jean Mensah for turning the commission into a political party.
Mr. Gunu’s comments is in relation with some seemingly irregularities that have characterised the ongoing voter register exhibition exercise that started a week ago.
He says the irregularities are a deliberate attempt by the Jean Mensah led commission to rig the 2020 elections.
“Free, fair, transparent and credible elections are one of the pillars of every democracy and in every competitive election, the process is as important as the results, so therefore, anybody who rigs the process is capable of rigging the results. The EC has started rigging the process.” He intimated
Among his claims are the changing of polling station codes, leading to the misplacement of voters in some districts in the volta region, making it difficult for persons on the register to verify their names at their original polling stations.
“As a result of the creation of the Anloga District, all the polling station codes have changed. Keta and Anlo used to be one district with D01 as their codes. Now Keta maintained it’s code and Anloga has now been assigned D02, a code that was originally for Ketu South. Now Ketu South is D03, the effect is that, people who transferred their votes this year have mistakenly being placed in different districts other than their original districts; for instance, someone in Ketu South has now been placed in Atokor, a town in Anloga district, a similar example was observed in South Dayi too which cuts across all the constituencies in the region,” he said.
According to James Gunu, several of registered voters along the border towns are placed on the exception list, a situation he described as bizarre.
“Along the border frontiers, most of the people have been placed on the exception list for not being citizens or not ordinarily residents. Majority of them were also said to have registered with NHIS cards in the past. They would need to be re-registered in the 2020 limited registration exercise, a situation I find very bizarre and frustrating.
In the Kpando constituency about 36 branches alone, have 539 people on the multiple lists. A visit to only 6 stations in Ho Central gives a total of 96 people on the multiple list,” he added.
He, therefore, called on the Electoral Commission to sit up and stop the apparent move to rig the 2020 general elections.
The claims by the regional secretary, corrobates that of the party in many circumstances.