The Electoral Commission (EC) has described as unfortunate the statement of the Trades Union Congress doubting the competence of the Commission to hold a successful election this year. David Adeenze-Kangah, Deputy Chairman of the EC, in a telephone that with the Times yesterday in response to the TUC's observation, said it stemmed from ignorance. "He could have done himself good if he had contacted me for us to educate him," Mr Adeenze-Kangah said. Addressing a news conference in Accra on Monday, the TUC Secretary-General, Kofi Asamoah, said among other things that “judging from lapses which characterised the recent voter registration and photo-taking exercise, it is difficult to escape the fear that our EC may not be up to the task come December 2008". Mr Adeenze-Kangah said a number of civil society groups and stakeholders in the electoral process had approached the EC to seek clarification on issues bothering them. "We expected the TUC Secretary-General to have approached us so that we can have the opportunity to educate him on the issues bothering him". Mr Adeenze-Kangah said the EC would have expected Mr Asamoah to have challenged the estimates of registering not more than 700,000 new entrants from the just ended limited registration exercise. Judging from past limited registration exercises and the demographic statistical evidence, he said the limited registration exercise for people who had attained the voting age of 18 years after the last registration exercise, could not exceed 700,000. The Deputy Chairman, said there was not a single new entrant (eligible voter) who had not gotten his or her I`D card and his or her photograph taken. Mr Adeenze-Kangah said the statement by Mr Asamoah could be recipe for chaos and could put the country into confusion. He reassured the nation that the Commission was adequately resourced to carry out its activities towards a credible general election in December. He advised the media to be circumspect in covering issues of sensitive nature as the one by the TUC Secretary-General, explaining that the media could have sought the EC's side of the story, before publication, to balance the reportage. Mr Kofi Arhin, Director of Elections, told the Times on phone that the Commission had a timeframe within which people who were issued with slips for not taking their pictures would have them taken. He said the EC would announce a date for them to have their pictures taken for the ID card but said such people were unlikely to be eligible to vote in the December general election. Mr Arhin explained that the system would not capture anymore data as the Commission would be doing data cleaning. Source: Times