Deputy minister for information, Mr. Pius Enam Hadzide has questioned the credibility of the National Democratic Congress’ claims to have found some discrepancies in the numbers recorded as registered voters in the ongoing voters registration exercise.
Speaking on Citi TV’s Big issue, Mr. Hadzide questioned how credible this information is, pinning it on the same…. of the party that declared them in a comfortable lead although they had lost.
Reading the portion of the presser that stated “it has come to our notice that the EC’s mischief is also at work in another dangerous form accross the nation. From a system out in place by our IT and Elections Directorate, both at the national and regional levels to collate registration figures, we have discovered that something fishy is definitely at play”, he said;
“This fourth issue of the NDC saying that they have some figures; they have tabulated their figures…My question is that, is this the same IT and Elections directorate that tabulated the 2016 Election and put the NDC in a comfortable lead?”
Mr. Hadzide believes that it is a matter that the Electoral Commission needs to respond to.
Registration in Senior High Schools
Raising a defense for the case the NDC has made against the registration in senior high schools accross the country, which is currently in court, the deputy infromation minister said that there has not been the creation of any new registration centers by the EC. According to him , it is merely the shifting of a registration center to prevent the situation where the students would have to go outside and register, risking contraction of COVID-19.
“What is happening is that, when you design a polling station, it covers a jurisdiction. So it is just that there is a gentleman’s agreement and understanding that the registration that we do under the mango tree here today, because of one or two reasons; maybe because the clouds have gathered, so let’s move it from the mango tree and send it to the classroom here” he explained.
“I am saying to you that for instance let me make this example, if you go to Accra Girls, everybody who is in Accra Girls, if there were no polling center in that school originally, everybody in that place maybe will leave to the nearby lorry station or something to register, so that is the code of that registration center but all the students from that school would have moved from that registration center to register. So because we don’t want the students to move from the school to the outskirts of the school…and come to the outside of the school,we have decided that let’s open the gate, let’s bring the registration center from outside of the school into the school. That’s not the creation of a new polling center”.
