Schools Were Reopened for Voters’ Registration not Exams – NDC

The NDC said the NPP government's moves to conduct voters' registration exercise in schools contravenes the law

Jul 10, 2020 - 10:23

Schools Were Reopened for Voters’ Registration not Exams – NDC

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has alleged that the reopening of schools to final-year SHS students was part of the government’s schemes to assemble them for voters’ registration.

The NDC's Director of Elections, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah who said this at a press briefing today [July 10, 2020] in Accra, opined that the Akufo-Addo government’s directive contravenes the law which mandates the Electoral Commission to gazette a designated polling centre for 21 days.

"We (the NDC) remind the EC that according to C.I. 91 they are required to gazette a designated polling centre for 21 days. In the absence of that, any so-called registration centre, be it in a school or elsewhere is illegal," Mr Afriyie Ankrah said.

"It is true that the EC was quick to refer to their mandate as prescribed by CI 91 but they conveniently left out portions of the same CI that compels them to gazette for a defined number of days.

"We refer you, ladies and gentlemen to Regulation 2, Paragraph 3 of the CI 91: "The Commission shall at least twenty-one days before the first day of the national registration of voters, inform political parties and the general public by publication in the Gazette of a place it designates as a registration centre".

Mr Ankrah questioned the rationale behind banning parents from visiting their wards in schools but allowing EC officials, security personnel and party agents to move freely into schools.

He said many Civil Society Organisations and health experts had already advised the government against re-opening the schools but the government still went ahead because of "the hope of winning the election at all cost".