The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of deliberately misrepresenting figures in the ongoing limited registration exercise as part of a grand scheme to rig the 2024 elections in favour of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
According to the party, the EC is collaborating with the government to falsify data and numbers collected from freshly registered voters.
At a news conference on Thursday, May 16, 2024, General Secretary Fifi Fiavi Kwetey made it clear that the electoral body would not be allowed to manipulate the system or rig the people’s will in favour of the failed government.
He labelled this as questionable activity that, if not addressed, may destabilise our democracy.
He warned that if this was a dress rehearsal for them to rig the general elections, the EC must be told to withdraw their approach because this time around, it will not be business as usual.
Mr. Kwetey stated that if EC officers make elementary errors in their numbers during the ongoing registration exercise, what should Ghanaians expect at polling stations during the next general elections?
“Such dubious behaviour from the EC could destabilise our democracy if left unchecked. Imagine the potential chaos on December 7, 2024. If the EC continues to release the error-ridden figures, what will be the security implications for their actions? If this is their dress rehearsal for the upcoming elections, then they must be told that they need to reconsider their actions. The EC might be testing the waters with their rigging strategy by deliberately misrepresenting and miscalculating registration figures, but our prompt detection and exposure of these egregious errors should serve as a clear warning to the EC about the vigilance of the NDC.
We are fully prepared to safeguard the sanctity of the coming elections. We expect the EC to firmly renounce any intention, if it exists, to collude with the failed NPP to rig the elections. Any such attempt would be decisively thwarted. The EC must commit to conducting free, transparent, unbiased, and credible elections.”
He went on to say that, while the EC accepted inaccuracies in some of the statistics captured, such as those registered in specific locations, the revised figures still contained errors.
He said on May 12, the EC admitted to the errors and claimed that the total number of registered voters remains unchanged despite the total figures over the four days.
He described this as transpositional rigging, which is being deployed by the EC to manipulate the figures.
“It will astonish you, ladies and gentlemen, to learn that even their revised figures are still riddled with errors and need further corrections. For instance, in the Oti region, day two’s figure of 578 was erroniously swapped with day three’s figure of 1,515. If these figures are realigned correctly, day two’s national total should be 18,330 and not 19,267. Day three’s total should be 49,553 and not 48,616. Similarly, the day three figure for Bono East, as stated in their corrected data, is 771, but this is totally wrong. Bono East recorded 2,252 per our data. This figure will affect the total registered voters of 5,118 for Bono East for the four days as stated by the EC.
Indeed, the total should rather be 6,599, thereby leading to a grand total of 144,495 and not 143,014 as put out by Dr. Bossman Asare in his press conference on May 12, 2024.”
Source: rainbowradioonline.com
