NDC Wants IPAC Meeting Reconvened After Boycott

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) wants an Inter-Party Advisory Committee meeting organized by the Electoral Commission last month, recalled.

The meeting called to deliberate on issues concerning the voter’s register and a possible referendum on the creation of new regions was boycotted by the NDC after invitations arrived late.

Leadership of the NDC said it was impossible for them to be present at the meeting given the short period of notice the EC gave them.

Although the other political parties were present, they also chastised the EC over its poor communication. The EC conceded and apologised .

But the NDC will have none of that.
The party says no decision taken at the previous meeting will be binding on them especially when they were not in attendance.

The only way the EC can remedy the situation, according to the General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia is for it to recall the meeting and discuss same issues.

“You have held a meeting without a major stakeholder like the NDC. We are only two parties in Parliament, the ruling party and NDC so if you are talking about electoral matters – a compilation of register, holding a referendum – and a major party like that has not been involved at all I don’t think it is good for our democracy.

“So we asking that let us hold the meeting again, bring the same issues again and let us discuss them as if no meeting has taken place. They should reconvene the meeting with proper notice to all concerned,” he added.

Mr Asiedu Nketia said the party has accepted the on-air apology rendered by the EC following their boycott and complain but wants the right thing to be done.

“We were not invited to the meeting and we indicated to them that if you give us a notification to a meeting 46 minutes to the time of the meeting, we are not deemed to be properly invited.”

He insists the meeting goes against all the procedures of a proper meeting and nothing decided there will be considered by the NDC as valid.

The best way forward for him is for the EC to call a new meeting “and give all parties proper notices then we will go and discuss the issues as if nothing happened.”

In his view, the process governing the procedure for meetings have been flouted by the EC because "if you decide that one participant out of 100 will not be invited, the 99 members who are there cannot make the meeting valid because you have not invited everybody so that meeting cannot be valid.

“Legally, the meeting cannot hold and if they insist that the meeting will hold we will test it elsewhere,” he told Joy News' Kwesi Parker Wilson.