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Limited
voter registration
extended by two days
Accra, Aug. 10, Ghanadot/GNA - The
Electoral Commission on Sunday extended the limited
registration of voters that was to have ended on Sunday by
two days to cater for crowds that are still in queues across
the country.
The exercise, which is meant to capture those who have
turned 18 years and others who do not have their names on
the ballot, will now end at 1800 hours on Tuesday, August
12, according to a statement signed by Mr. Christian Owusu-Parry,
Acting Director of Public Affairs.
The statement said: “The Electoral Commission has extended
the limited registration exercise nationwide by two days.
This is to enable regional directors of the Commission to
arrange to cater for all eligible persons who are still in
queues to be registered.”
The EC asked regional directors to “mobilise all resources
to enable them to cover all such applicants in their
respective regions within the two days, ending 6 pm (1800
hours) on Tuesday, 12th August 2008”.
The EC said special registration centres would be
established at the Head Office and regional offices of the
Commission to cater for the physically challenged within the
period.
The EC has been overwhelmed by huge crowds that have
thronged the registration centres, well beyond the 800,000
to one million it had projected to capture.
The exercise, which started on July 31, has been plagued
with operational challenges including shortage of
registration forms and other logistics, slow process,
confusion and violence.
Mr. David Adeenze-Kangah, EC Deputy Chairman in-Charge of
Finance and Administration, described the huge turnout as an
abnormal phenomenon.
“We have never experienced huge inflows of potential voters
at the centres to register during limited registration
exercise since the inception of the Fourth Republic. Not
even during the main exercise has the intensity been almost
constant throughout the period,” he told the Ghana News
Agency in an interview.
The two main political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP)
and National Democratic Congress (NDC), have been trading
accusations about violence, registration of minors and
confusion that have characterised the exercise.
There were appeals across the country urging the EC to
extend the period of registration.
GNA
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