NDC elections in limbo?
With barely three days to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) primaries, it is unclear whether the High Court will give the go ahead for the elections to be held following an interlocutory injunction placed on it by one of the three flag bearer aspirants, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, restraining the party from going ahead with the polls until it produces a complete and accurate photo album register.
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But the Director of Legal Affairs of the party, Abraham Amaliba, has assured members that the legal directorate would ensure that the elections come off as scheduled.
He told the Daily Graphic that the party was heading to court to use all legal means to ensure that the elections are held on Saturday.
He said the legal team was scheduled to be in court yesterday to file a process which would allow the court to hear the application to allow the elections to be held.
Writ
In the writ Dr Duffuor prayed the ‘court to deliver’ the complete register to his camp and the two other presidential aspirants—John Dramani Mahama and Kojo Bonsu—at least five weeks ahead of the elections.
The writ filed last Monday by solicitors for Dr Duffuor, Opoku Amponsah and Co, said a sizeable number of the eligible voters have no photographs exhibited on the photo album register making it impossible to conduct any meaningful verification exercise on those affected.
The plaintiff added that to his utmost surprise, on verification, it was found out that the number of constituencies on the hard drive given to his representatives was 220 as opposed to the alleged number of 228 constituencies indicated by the party.
It said the initial verification of the said 220 constituencies on the hard drive also established basic errors and inaccuracies that rendered the photo album register inaccurate and unable for free, fair and credible elections.
According to the writ, records of some delegates had been duplicated and given different names and party identification numbers.
It added that of the 220 constituencies, an exceptional list of 74,799 people have been created to take part in the elections and that exceptional list could not be verified because of the scanty information about them in the photo album.
The plaintiff insisted that for no credible reason, 3910 eligible voters at the 220 constituencies had been disenfranchised.
As a result of all these and against the backdrop that a sizeable number of eligible voters have no photographs exhibited on the photo album, it makes it impossible to conduct any meaningful verification exercise on them.
Additional information
It must be noted that because it’s a motion on notice, it would be heard on Monday, by which time if the NDC goes ahead with the elections, it would have completed the process.
