President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said that demands by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for a forensic audit of the 2024 provisional voter’s register lacks merit and has since been put to rest.
According to him, the NDC’s concerns about irregularities in the register were unfounded.
President Akufo-Addo indicated that the Electoral Commission (EC) had publicly addressed the matter, presenting evidence that undermined the opposition’s accusations.
He said following the EC’s clarification, the NDC has now agreed to adhere to the Commission’s planned programme.
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“The other day the EC chose to broadcast publicly its deliberations on these issues, and I think the whole country came to realise that in fact there was no substance in the claims that the opposition was making,” he said.
“They had now gone ahead to say that they will abide by the programme that the EC has laid out. I think that that means implicitly that the demands that they were making have been shelved and they have to be shelved because there is no substance to it,” President Akufo-Addo said in an interview with France24.
The EC and various political parties have agreed to work together to address the challenges related to the Provisional Voters’ Register ahead of the 2024 General Election.
During an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting convened by the EC in Accra on Tuesday, October 1, both the Commission and the political parties acknowledged that ensuring a clean voters’ register was a collective responsibility, and thus, all stakeholders must contribute to make the register more robust.
The meeting extensively addressed the challenges associated with the Provisional Voters’ Register and the measures the Commission was implementing to strengthen its integrity.
Prior to the meeting, the NDC raised concerns about the register’s credibility and called for an independent forensic audit to ensure its integrity.
At the beginning of the meeting, the EC made an extensive presentation on the measures it had taken to address all identifiable discrepancies in the voters’ register.
EC Chairperson, Mrs Jean Mensa, said the exhibition exercise conducted by the Commission provided an opportunity for all stakeholders to flag errors in the register, among other legal remedies provided in the electoral law to address discrepancies in the draft register.
According to her, the Commission had resolved the discrepancies that were identified in the register during the exhibition exercise.
She added that calls for a forensic audit of the voters’ register were premature, emphasising that the Commission had not yet exhausted all available processes to clean and rectify the register.