Parties opposed to new register to meet ECOWAS over impasse

The Inter-Party Resistance against the New Voters Register has indicated that it will be meeting with officials of the ECOWAS Secretariat next week as part of efforts to get the Electoral Commission (EC) to rescind its decision to compile a new voters’ register.

“Maybe by [next week] Monday or Tuesday, we will be able to meet them [ECOWAS] and let them know,” the group’s convener, Hassan Ayariga, told Citi News.

“They will look at it from an independent angle and I think we need independent technical IT men to look into the issue of the compilation of this voters’ register,” he added.

The plan by the EC to compile a new register has been met with stiff opposition from some political parties and civil society organizations.

The group has held three demonstrations against the move.

It held one in Tamale dubbed “Tikusayi demo” and another one in Kumasi known as the “Yennpini demo” and the .

An Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting  ended in a stalemate.

But the EC still plans to go ahead with a compilation of the register and has assured political parties that an electronic version of the electoral roll will be delivered to them in the middle of October 2020.

The EC plans to abandon its current biometric verification system and procure a new one which has facial recognition technology.

The commission wants to do away with all forms of manual verification of voters.

The plan to compile the new voters’ register has been assigned a budget of GHS 390 million.

The EC has announced April 18, 2020, as the date to begin compiling the new register.

A provisional version of the register is expected to be ready in June 2020.

citinewsroom