The IPAC meeting will focus on the voter registration exercise, of which some political parties and other stakeholders have called for the exercise to be put on hold and also discuss the exclusion of the existing voters' identification card before submitting the Constitution Instrument (CI) to Parliament.
New voters' register brouhaha: NDC opts out of IPAC meeting
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has opted out of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting scheduled for Wednesday, May 27, 2020.
Recommended articles
The Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Peter Boamah Otokunor, speaking to Accra-based Citi FM called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to put proper mechanisms in place and organise a legitimate IPAC meeting.
He said "The last IPAC meeting which was held on 25th March 2020, we raised various concerns which led to political parties boycotting and we [NDC] walked out. That meeting does not constitute a proper IPAC meeting because they had divided one committee into groups– you may want to call it double tracking– to decide on the same issue. And we think that with any such approach, you are not going to properly appreciate and understand the issue and contributions from various political parties and we believe that, decision making will be problematic. So we decide not to participate in that meeting because we raised a question earlier and we are waiting for a response which did not come so we decided to boycott the meeting because it was not going to serve the purpose for which it was called."
"Again, we thought the Electoral Commission would have learned its lessons and now we have been called to another IPAC meeting on Wednesday with the same arrangement that we are going to have the meeting in two halves with some coming in the morning and some coming in the afternoon and we think this is an improper way or organising an IPAC meeting and it gives one the opportunity to perpetrate any mischief in the meeting and we think the National Democratic Congress cannot be part of that meeting. If the Electoral Commission is refusing to put in place the proper mechanism to hold a proper legitimate IPAC meeting which decision can be accepted by all stakeholders, then NDC [officials] are not going to participate in the Wednesday meeting and we have since relayed our concerns to the EC again," he stated.
Political parties represented
The meeting, which is expected to be held at the IPAC room of the EC, was to assemble all registered political parties including the New Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC), Convention People's Party (CPP), Progressive People's Party (PPP), People's National Convention (PNC), Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) and Ghana Union Movement (GUM).
The rest are the Every Ghanaian Living Everywhere (EGLE), United Front Party (UFP), Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), National Democratic Party (NDP), All People's Congress (APC), United Progressive Party (UPP), and Power United Party (PUP).
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
Email: eyewitness@pulse.com.gh