New voters register still needless - Professor Gyampo

A political scientist, Professor Ransford Gyampo says the compilation of the new voters’ register was a needless exercise, especially considering this is an election year.

According to him, even though the Electoral Commission has succeeded in compiling new voters’ register as promised, it will be hypocritical on his part to change his stance on the major exercise conducted in an election year.

“My position is that the new voters’ register was not necessary and it is from a principled position; I will never change it today or tomorrow; it was needless to compile new voters’ register”, he said.

Buttressing his point on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, the Director of the Centre for European Studies of the University of Ghana revealed that all the political parties, the Electoral Commission and stakeholders at a meeting after the 2012 election, agreed not to conduct any major activity in an election year adain since some programmes by the EC, especially the biometric voter register and creation of new constituencies created undue tension in the country.

He added that he coordinated the IEA sponsored program which all the political parties together including the Electoral Commission and other stakeholders met to discuss a proposal for electoral reforms; adding that there was an agreed that, “EC should bring a calendar of its activities showing what it is going to do before another election but in the election year we should not do anything which is major”.

“The political parties said that what made the 2012 election tensed which culminated in election petition was the introduction of a biometric register by the EC introduced in an election year and within that same year, additional constituencies were created, and so it was the political parties that agreed that there should such major activities in the election year”.

"...now the purpose for the meeting to end tension, acrimony, and violence which characterized the election has been breached as the same stakeholders who signed the treaty violated it...

“I was the coordinator of that program and if something that all the political parties signed against have been abused, why should I support it? I can’t support it and that is my position that something that we all have agreed to do, you have gone against it”, he argued.

He bemoaned the culture of wastefulness - whereby a project is left stale despite the huge sums of monies spent - that seem to embody our politics in an election year.