Activate continuous voter registration - PNC urges

The  People’s National Convention (PNC) has, as a matter of urgency, called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to quickly convene an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting to work out modalities on how to activate  the continuous voter registration exercise.

It explained the involvement of political parties in working out the modalities would prevent the exercise from being shot down as it happened in the previous continuous registration exercise which was suspended because political parties accused the EC of not engaging  them.

Continuous registration

According to the Director of Communications of the PNC, Mr Emmanuel  Wilson, the PNC was of the view that a continuous registration was the best option since it took out the tension that characterised the limited voter registration.

He said the PNC believed that the continuous registration exercise held the best prospects for persons who have turned 18 and those who are above but had not registered as voters. 

The director of communications, who was sharing the party’s position on the just-ended limited voter registration exercise, said the continuous voter registration would help to also minimise the interference of political parties  in the registration exercise which was hijacked by the political parties.

According to him, the PNC  was unhappy with the pockets of violence,  particularly at border towns and other places such as Chereponi in the Northern Region, some parts of Upper West, Ashanti and Volta regions.

Busing people

He said the violence could have been avoided  if NDC and NPP did not engage in busing people and allowed EC to do its work.

He said with the continuous registration, there would not be the need to bus people to registration centres, which causes unnecessary tension and violence.

“Acknowledging the limited time we have on our hands to the general election, we the members and executives of PNC are calling for the activation of the continuous  registration latest next week’’, he said.

Limited registration

Mr Wilson said  the PNC was not happy about how the limited registration was conducted  as clearly a lot of people had been disenfranchised.

He said media reports  from the Ashanti and Northern regions and school campuses indicated that a good number of people could not get the chance to register.

He said, for instance, that the EC did not create enough room for the youth, especially those on the campuses to register.

The director of communications stated that since the youth were the party’s  main target for the 2016 election, “we would not like to support any action  that would  disenfranchise the youth from voting for the PNC”.