“Insecurity in Volta Region may force postponement of presidential election”

The Governance Research Bureau has warned that escalation in attacks in the Volta Region by the so-called Western Togoland secessionists could create insecurity and prevent people in the region from voting in the December elections.

If that happened the presidential elections may not be held at all and even if they were held in the other regions, according to Dr. Kwame Asah Asante, Resource Person of the Bureau, the Electoral Commission would not be able to declare a winner due to non-participation by people in the Volta Region.

Speaking on TV 3 Election Watch programme on Wednesday, he explained that the exclusion of any part of the country from exercising their franchise in the presidential election would incapacitate the EC from declaring the winner.

Analysts believe that any postponement of the December 7 presidential election would create a leadership vacuum as Ghana would be without a president after January 7, 2021 though parliamentary elections can be held in the other regions and their results declared.

Dr. Asante, also Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Ghana, discounted conspiracy theories linking both the NPP government and opposition NDC to the insurgency and noted that no justification could be established for such theories.

For the NDC, he said, the Volta Region is one of its strongholds and it had a lot to lose if the region was destabilized, adding that already a measure of voter apathy was witnessed in the 2012 and 2016 elections in Ho Central, North and South Tongu constituencies

With regard to the NPP, Dr. Asante said the NPP had been performing well in the Volta Region over the years and it would need its increasing share of votes in the region to boost its chances of winning the elections.

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