Confusion At IPAC Meeting! – Over New Voters Register

It was billed to be a showdown and it indeed lived to its billing as heated arguments, heightened tensions and near exchange of blows plunged the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting on the controversial new voters’ register into a free-for-all fight.

Reports say but for the intervention of the Most Reverend Charles Gabriel Palmer–Buckle, there would have been bloodshed at the meeting that saw the parties taking entrenched positions over the matter.

According to Deputy NDC General Secretary, Peter Boamah Otokunor, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle, to stop leader of Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Kofi Apaloo and the General Secretary of All People’s Congress (APC), Mordechai Thiombiano Lompo, from further throwing punches at each other.

“There were exchange of blows; the leader of the LPG had to carry a chair [and] by the timely intervention of Archbishop Palmer-Buckle, there would have been bloodshed,” Otokunor told JoyNews.

Reports also suggest that Civil Society Groups present at the meeting were also denied the opportunity to contribute to the discussion by the Commission.          

The meeting was convened at the behest of the EC’s Eminent Advisory Committee which had called for an all-inclusive engagement on the issue.

On January 15, 2020, the EC’s Advisory Committee called for calm and said it plans to meet the various stakeholders on the matter.

Yesterday’s meeting, facilitated by the EC’s Eminent Advisory Committee, was expected to produce a lasting consensus on the matter but that never was.

The EC had earlier given suggestions that it was determined to go ahead with its plan without the consent of the opposing political parties, raising concerns about the lack of consensus among the stakeholders.

A statement signed by the EC’s acting Director of Public Affairs, Sylvia Annoh, on behalf of the Committee said the meeting seeks “to engage with the Inter-Party Advisory Committee on the Electoral Commission’s plan to compile a new Voters’ Register ahead of the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.”

The controversy stems from the EC plans to abandon its current biometric verification system and procure a new one which has a facial recognition technology.

But these plans are being opposed by a coalition of political parties known as the Inter-Party Resistance Against New Voter Register.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is among the parties opposing the new register.

The group maintains that any money spent on the register will be a waste of the taxpayer’s money.

The NDC walked out of an IPAC meeting on December 10, 2019, when the matter came up.

Addressing the press on Wednesday, the Chairman of the People’s National Convention, Bernard Mornah, noted that although the coalition will attend the scheduled meeting with misgivings, they will do so “with an open mind.”

As at press time yesterday, the EC was yet to issue a communique about the turn of events at the meeting.