EC not learning from mistakes on voters register – Dr. Abu Sakara

The 2012 Presidential candidate of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Dr. Abu Sakara says the most resourceful move for the country on the state of the voters register is to secure an integrated database system that can be automated for deductions and correction for subsequent elections.

The country, he said, can’t be making same mistakes every time by spending huge resources to be cleaning the register always, insisting that the state must commit to building such integrated system that is based on the National Identification platform.

He intimated that improving the efficiency of our electoral database in that manner will keep it dynamic so that it will make the register self-updating continuously.

Speaking on Kasapa 102.3 FM, Dr. Sakara said: "if you commission an IT company to do this for the nation, if we can’t even use it for 2016 elections, at least we can be sure that we have done the corrections for subsequent elections. Let us initiate the process now. The mechanism of maintaining such database is the critical thing to do, so we’ll set it continuously updating itself. We need to initiate a new system and a way of building a new voters register now. Let’s not think in a box.”

The Electoral Commission (EC) is expected to hold a forum on the last week of October during which political parties are expected to make presentations on whether there is a need or not for a new voters register to be compiled ahead of the 2016 election.

The EC expects that at the end of this forum a consensus would have been reached on this matter which has sparked a raging public debate among political parties and other civil society organizations.

Two opposition parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) are spearheading the crusade for a new voters register to be compiled ahead of the 2016 elections which promises to be keenly contested.