Vexatious Conundrum

The vexatious voter register continues to draw controversy, the latest being whether the president did ask for the replacement of the electoral roll of its counterpart in neighbouring Togo or not.

We wish matters did not get to this depth of even threatening the integrity of the president as it were. This week has begun with the first citizen of the land denying emphatically that he did not ask for the replacement of the electoral roll in Togo when he was Chairman of the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS).

In a google-powered age, such denials and even allegations can easily be verified by inquisitive google worms and they are many in the political realm. They have done just that and the president appears to have lost it to the quantum of textual evidence alongside premises to support their conclusion.

Their position that it was his intervention that led to the replacement of the voter register in Togo and earned him accolades which he relished at the time, makes interesting brooding.

He did, they claim, ask the Togolese authorities to ensure that there was in place a credible register acceptable to all parties – something which led to the replacement of the voter register before the elections in that country.

That was what did the magic of calming the tempers in the country and eventually leading to hitch-free polls.

Those who doubt his denial ask why he did not reject the plaudits at the time they were poured on him. One of those chasing him over the Togolese  register denial has posed a question about what informed the replacement of the electoral roll in that country, had he not intervened in that direction.

His denial today is rich turning the voter register into an enigma which would in the run-up to next year's elections, test the endurance level of both antagonists and protagonists of a new electoral roll.

The president has given his political opponents adequate points to test his integrity. Now that they have pointed at the google proofs, we await his response; but hope it would be soon and one that would put paid to the raging issue.

For a long time since the agitation for a replacement of the register made landfall as it were, he did well by avoiding any reference to it and that was not in the interest of his opponents.

The truth of the matter is that he should have continued to keep his preference to himself. Now that he has come out loud and clear where he stands in this matter and even going ahead to deny the Togo magic as he administered it, he has enriched the debate.

Young registers are not changed, they are cleaned, according to him. The same could have been said for the register he fought tooth and nail to have replaced before the current one. Time flies fast; he was then not a president and so the standards can be varied now.