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The opposition Democratic National Congress (NDC) has blamed the Electoral Commission (EC) for the delay in submitting its presidential nomination forms before the 2020 general elections.
This comes after the party announced its intention of its nomination at 11:00 am on Wednesday, however, the delegation that was to present on behalf of its standard-bearer, John Mahama, showed up at the Commission office with six hours late.
Explaining the reason for their delay in a press conference, the party’s general secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said that the obstacles imposed by the EC before the December elections made it almost impossible for them to meet the deadline.
According to him, the voter cards of some of his supporters were replaced at the last minute, so they had to go back and recapture the data of their supporters.
“They have given us five days to present the nomination from Monday to Friday, but let’s ask ourselves, in which registry are we presenting the nominations?
“The laws of the Commission itself indicated that an old registry is not extinguished, until a new one is finalized and certified.
“But this is the situation where we have been asked to submit nominations, but we do not know which record will be the base document for the submission of nominations,” he said.
Mr. Nketia added that “we were unable to come at 11 o’clock because this morning some of our supporters who had completed the document by providing their voter identification numbers were called to be informed that the Commission had changed their identification cards, so all the data that we had captured had to be reviewed. “
The Secretary General then recalled the warnings the NDC had given the EC when it announced its intention to compile a new voter register.
For him, the incidents that are happening now vindicate earlier claims by the NDC that the time was too short to compile a very complete and credible record before the elections.
“As we speak, the Election Commission is displaying parts of the register in which we are supposed to submit our nomination. And it is called provisional registration because it has not been certified, whatever they say, a provisional document is still a provisional document ”, she stressed.
Meanwhile, the EC president, Jean Mensa, after receiving the nomination forms, expressed her disappointment at the absence of the flag bearer or his running mate to carry out the activity personally.
He explained that the physical presence of John Mahama would have given him the opportunity to address some questions that he raised about some of his processes by the latter before the polls.
“As a committee, we would have wished that NDC flag bearer John Mahama or his vice president, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, had been here personally to present their nomination forms, as it would have allowed us to participate, in particular, former president on some of the his concerns that he has pointed out in the media, ”he said.
