Political Scientist Professor Ransford Gyampo has charged the Electoral Commission (EC) to reconstitute the recently held controversial Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting to allow for participation by all the political parties in the country.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Wednesday boycotted the Jean Mensa led EC’s maiden IPAC meeting citing late invitation.
According to the NDC, it received the invitation to the meeting at 12:15 for a meeting which was to start at 1:00 pm
“How can the Electoral Commission, a so-called competent Electoral Commission…you remember the former commissioners were removed for incompetence and now they are replaced with very competent Electoral Commission and that commission members will give a notice of 45minutes for an IPAC meeting?
“And, will be inviting political parties to meetings through text messages less than 24 hours. So we have responded to them stating that unfortunately, we are unable to honour this invitation,” the General Secretary of the NDC John Asiedu Nketia told Starr Today’s Atiewin Mbillah-Lawson.
The purpose of the meeting which was chaired by the Deputy Chairperson of the EC, Samuel Tettey was to “discuss the 2018 limited Registration Exercise and the Referendum.”
Commenting on the NDC’s boycott, Professor Gyampo told Mbillah-Lawson: “Registration of voters is not a child’s play. It is an issue that over the years has always brought about tension and heated confrontation between the two main political parties.”
“So you can’t discuss this particular thorny issue without the participation of the major opposition party. I think we should look at the impact or the effect of chaos and then also the possible effect of lack of trust that would impact on the work of the electoral commission by the political parties and then rethink or have a new position of reconvening to get everybody back around table to discuss the issues,” he added.
NDC’s boycott took shine out of IPAC meeting
The EC has admitted that the absence of the biggest opposition party from Wednesday’s Inter-party Advisory Committee meeting organised by the Commission took shine out of the programme.
Speaking to Starr News, the public relations officer of the commission Eric Dzakpasu said the presence of the NDC would have made the meeting and deliberations better.
“We would’ve wished all the parties were represented and then to raise their concern, in fact when I said the other parties were represented, it was not as if they were very comfortable with the arrangement,they raised this major concern that the notice was too short, they were not prepared, but then we also explained the time constraint relative to our program of activities and also apologised that moving forward things will be done properly as we use to do it .
“So we would have wished they had come to raise their concern then we explain and apologise as we did to the others. You know as the main opposition party, it took some bit of shine out of the meeting, out of the deliberations. If they were around it would’ve been better but it’s rather unfortunate they were not around and we are sorry, we apologise,” he stated.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
