Following the controversy around the credibility of Ghana’s electoral register, a stateswoman Dr. Joyce Aryee wants the Electoral Commission to create a new one.
The Executive Director of Salt and Light Ministries said on Multi TV’s AM Show: “My own personal feeling is that you don’t want to work with a document that is so controversial…. I think the best thing to do is to stop all the controversy and get a new one.”
She added that a “clean slate” will ”shut everybody up so when you lose, you lose; when you win, you win”.
The Electoral Commission has had to invite inputs of other political parties and has also engaged the services of IT experts to help review the country’s electoral roll after pressure from the opposition New Patriotic Party and other parties.
The party has presented evidence which, it said, points to a bloated register.
Dr. Joyce Aryee believes that state institutions should be accommodating enough to allow requests and demands ahead of the 2016 general elections.
She also backed a push by a pro-NPP group, Let My Vote Count Alliance, to picket at the Electoral Commission despite being repeatedly denied by the police who insist it is a security zone.
“It’s an office…picketing you can always restrict picketing…even if 10 or five people sat there that will be picketing, you don’t have to take 2,000”.
According to Joyce Aryee, if the parties appreciate that a picket is nothing more than a few people sitting down and holding placards, perhaps the action of LMVCA would not be so controversial.
She described the violent clashes between the police and protesters as unfortunate.
“We’ve come so far in our democratic dispensation we don’t need these things (violence)”.
The respected leader also weighed into the judicial scandal that has resulted in the suspension of 34 High Court judges, magistrates and circuit court judges. The suspended judges were filmed allegedly collecting bribes.
“You cannot have a nation that cannot trust its judges because [justice] is your last resort”.
The scandal, she said, is worrying because it shows how far corruption has eaten into the fabric of society.
“The perception of corruption is everywhere and that is frightening.”
Source – Joyfm