Thursday, November 13, 2008

Parties will get Transfer List after exercise - EC official

The Electoral Commission (EC) will make the voters Transfer List with their polling stations available to the political parties
and other stakeholders at the end of the exercise.
     Nana Oduro Numapau, Ashiedu Keteke District Electoral Officer stated this in Accra on Thursday at a meeting with a delegation of the Executives of the Odododiodioo Constituency of the National Democratic (NDC).
     The NDC delegation made up of the MP for the area and the Parliamentary Candidate of the party, Mr. Jonathan Nii Tackie-Komme, Mr. Daniel Okai, Mr. Festus Bekoe and Mr. Samuel Armah, Constituency Chairman, Vice Chairman and Organiser respectively was at the District EC Office to express concern about the conduct of the exercise and the numbers involved.
      The delegation noted that the 238 transfers as at the time of the meeting was unwieldy and unprecedented in the electoral history of the area and therefore decided to meet the EC to find out if it was true that mass transfers were taking place and whether the persons involved were within the area.
      They called for the exercise to be conducted in a transparent manner devoid of suspicion and suggested the involvement of party agents, adding that the party wanted to know the criteria being used for the transfers.
      The NDC delegation reminded the EC about its petition to expunge the register for the area of voters not qualified to exercise their franchise in the constituency due to the location of the central business area of Accra with many markets within the constituency, which attracted many non-residents and said it was alarmed with the large number of mass transfers.
     Nana Oduro Numapau explained that even though EC officials did not have any mechanism to determine if the people where residents of the area, they interviewed them before accepting transfers.
    "The Commission is not restricted with numbers in the exercise", he said, adding, "The EC has a pool house to cross-check the genuineness of the transfers and the Commission is on course", Nana Oduro Numapau stated.
    The District Electoral Officer said the EC did not allow Party Agents in its programmes at its offices and said it only allowed Agents to observe its field operations.
     Nana Oduro Numapau, in answer to a question said, "The Transfer List is a public document and it will be given to the parties with the polling stations of the persons at the end of the exercise".
    Just as the meeting was taking place, Mr. Prince Ahmed Sowah, Parliamentary Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) came to complain to the District Electoral Officer that activists of his party had informed him that some NDC executives were preventing people they had mobilized to transfer their votes from doing so.
     He explained that his party was only helping in the exercise in view of the low publicity the Commission had given on the exercise.
      Mr. Tackie-Komme told newsmen that he had information that a political party was mobilizing people to transfer their votes to the area and they were being included in the James Town Police Station polling station.
GNA

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