Let’s Have Ambassadors For Justice Not Peace Alone -Chairman Wontumi

From IssahAlhassan, Kumasi
THE ASHANTI Regional Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Bernard Antwi Boasiako, has stressed the need for Ghanaians not to focus on promoting peace alone, but also justice, since the two work together.

Mr Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, noted that the penchant for campaigning for peace and neglecting the essence of justice amounts to hypocrisy, emphasising that there can never be peace in a society where there is no justice.

The Ashanti Regional Chairman of the biggest opposition party has, therefore, reminded civil society organizations, religious bodies, traditional authorities and international partners to prevail upon the Electoral Commission (EC) to do its work in an atmosphere of transparency, fairness and without ambiguity.

Addressing the media on Tuesday to register the party’s displeasure at what it says were several anomalies and discrepancies in the ongoing Voters’ Exhibition and Re-registration Exercise, Chairman Wontumi pointed out that the EC has failed to ensure fairness in the exercise and this, he said, could derail efforts by stakeholders to ensure free, fair and transparent elections.

The opposition party listed amongst other things the deletion of names of people who never used the NHIS card in registering, deletion of people who are alive but marked dead, the frustrations people are going through in trying to replace their lost cards, the slow pace of re-registration of disqualified NHIS card holders and the abnormal incidents of multiple registration.

The party further contends what it labelled as a novelty in the ongoing registration and exhibition whereby names of registrants are being deleted for allegedly engaging in multiple registration, through no fault of theirs.

According to the Ashanti Regional NPP, it has received several reports that names of some potential registrants in its strongholds are being deleted from the list for allegedly dabbling in multiple registration.

The party pointed out that the anomaly, which has arisen as a result of the manual setting of the Biometric Device at a rather odd time, has denied lots of innocent persons from getting their names on the register.

Apart from this, the opposition party also expressed concerned about another strange phenomenon where people who are alive are being labelled as dead and getting their names deleted.

It said with only two days left for people whose names were deleted to reregister, it fears that lots of innocent voters would be denied the chance to exercise their franchise if nothing was done to address the issues.

The opposition party is therefore calling on the EC to extend the deadline for the re-registration of deleted names as well as rectify the abnormal situation of registrants whose names are being taken out of the list for alleged multiple registration.

The NPP regional executives cited for example that in the Atwima Mponua constituency, about 1,700 names had so far been deleted as having engaged in multiple registration and this figure, according to the party, is not only alarming but also suspicious.

“Is it not strange that in the Ashanti Region you have an average of 38 names being deleted as engaging in multiple registration across the various polling stations during the previous. This figure is highly suspicious because one cannot justify how they came about,” the Regional Secretary of the party, Mr. Sam Pyne pointed out.

According to him, the explanation given by the EC that the names were deleted because the people engaged in double registration is very flimsy, adding that it is unacceptable for innocent persons to be punished as a result of the EC’s own negligence.

“One may ask why someone would deliberately set the time on the biometric device for the purpose of deleting their names later; it is highly unfair and cannot be accepted.

“Apart from this when someone goes to register and he is asked to put his or her hand on the verification machine twice and it is counted as double, how can that be the fault of the person,” Sam Pyne lamented.

The opposition party reminded the EC and Ghanaians about the need for fairness and transparency, stressing that any attempt to skew the processes in favour of one particular party will not augur well for the peace and tranquility the country is enjoying.