EC, political parties hold IPAC meeting today

The Electoral Commission, EC and political parties in the country will today hold their Inter-Party Committee meeting, IPAC meeting.

The meeting is expected to allow stakeholders deliberate on the new voters' register and other issues related to the 2020 general elections. 

 But the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) said its leadership will not attend the Wednesday’s meeting.

Deputy general secretary of the NDC, Peter Otokunor, said officials of the party will not risk their lives to attend the meeting in a ‘small room’ in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We can’t be part of that IPAC meeting, we think that it is an illegitimate IPAC meeting. If it is by way of passing information to us there are several communication channels to reach us. They can write to us, that is better than going to risk ourselves in that small room."

"We have said that if they want to have a proper meeting they should go for a bigger auditorium like the Coconut Groove Hotel where they used to go for such a meeting. We think that there is a sinister motive behind this whole agenda, we are not participating and we are demanding that this meeting is postponed until a befitting venue is decided,” he said.

Meanwhile, the party has requested from the Electoral Commission, a training manual for voters registration officials ahead of the planned exercise.

The party has also asked for the training manual for political party agent for the exercise, including other documents and forms relevant to the 2020 election registration exercise.

A letter to the EC Chairperson signed by the party’s General Secretary Johnson Aseidu Nketiah read: “The National’ Democratic Congress (NDC) has become aware of an ongoing nationwide training exercise being conducted by the Electoral Commission to prepare its staff to be deployed for the conduct of voter registration prior to the 2020 General Elections”.

It stressed: “As a major stakeholder whose agents have important functions to perform during the exercise to ensure its credibility, we are by this letter officially requesting the commission to supply the NDC with the above-named documents and any other material that would enable the party prepare our agents adequately for same.”

The NDC has been critical and publicly opposed plans by the electoral Commission to develop new voters register for the 2020 polls.