National Secretary of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), Remy Edmundson has denounced the actions of the Electoral Commission (EC), labelling them as a breach of trust.
He says during the last Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held on May 29, it was agreed that political parties would have the opportunity to station their agents to observe proceedings during the transfer of votes.
However, Mr. Edmundson noted that late Friday, May 31, they received a notice to attend an emergency IPAC meeting scheduled for Monday, June 3.
Mr. Edmundson further disclosed that while en route to the IPAC meeting, he learned through media reports that the Electoral Commission had issued instructions to their officers not to allow political party agents at polling stations, contrary to the agreement reached during the previous IPAC meeting.
Speaking on the JoyNews AM Show, Mr. Edmundson stated, "Yesterday, we questioned them because we found it very surprising because if you called us for a meeting, and the whole agenda was to discuss the ongoing data transfer exercise, so we did not understand why you could not wait to dialogue with us since we had all collectively reached an agreement just a few days prior."
Mr. Edmundson expressed that when they sought clarification from the Electoral Commission regarding the decision to disallow party agents from observing proceedings, they were informed that it was in response to the incident in Kasoa.
This follows the arrest of the NDC party's constituency organiser, Daniel Techie Mensah and one other person after a member of the NPP was stabbed during an altercation.
Identified as Ato Koomson, son of NPP MP for Awutu Senya East and Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mavis Hawa Koomson, the injured man is currently at the 37 Military Hospital receiving treatment after he was stabbed on one side of his chest.
However, Mr Edmunson emphasised that the occurrence of such incidents was not frequent or significant enough to warrant such a decision.
“If you say that something has happened and so political party agents are disrupting the exercise, how many of such incidents have we heard of nationwide, and in case anytime we are having regular voter registration exercise, who have a lot of these incidents where party agents are around, so we felt it was a bit of pre-mature and quite in bad faith for the EC to solely go ahead to issue such a directive without consulting the political parties who are also stakeholders in this whole electoral exercise?" he noted.
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