Without any shred of doubt, the Afari Djan led Electoral Commission has failed to prove the existence of 241,524 voters abroad and returning peacekeepers whose inclusion according to the EC bloated the provisional 13,917,366 to 14,158,890. The Electoral Commission in response to the plaintiffs, Nana Akufo-Addo and Co’s ongoing Supreme Court case challenging the declaration of John Mahama as winner of the Presidential elections that produced John Dramani Mahama as President. Responding to the plaintiff’s questioning the integrity of the voters who register in paragraph 6 of its response, the Electoral Commission stated “In answer to paragraph 12 of the Petition, the 2nd Respondent says that the initial provisional figure it announced of registered voters was 13,917,366. After the conduct of registration of Foreign Service officials, students abroad on government scholarship, other Ghanaians working abroad in International organizations and the late registration of service personnel returning from international peacekeeping duties, it announced a figure of 14, 158,890 representing the raw entries in the Registration Database”.
To the petitioners, the EC’s response clearly justified a bloat of the biometric voters’ register by 241,524 as resulting from foreign registrations and the registration of returning peacekeepers.
This huge number of foreign registrations as indicated by the EC necessitated the plaintiffs in the ongoing case to request the Electoral Commission to produce the list of all 241,524 people it registered abroad, a request granted by the Supreme Court which gave the Commission seven days to produce this list of foreign registered voters.
However, after seven days of waiting, all the Electoral Commission could produce was a list of 705 Ghanaians representing Ghanaians in foreign missions, Ghanaians working in other international bodies and Students on Government Scholarship as well as a list of 2,178 returning peacekeepers.
Full Article: EC caught pants down over 241,000 foreign votes | Feature Article 2013-02-15.
