The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has emphasised it will not recognise any Diaspora votes in the 2008 elections and would accept results based only on ballots cast in Ghana. NDC’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu-Nketia stated the position in an interview with Joy News after delegates of the party and those of two other political parties; the People’s National Convention and the Egle Party have walked out on the Electoral Commission for suggesting it wanted to implement the Representation of the Peoples’ Amendment Act. The ROPAA gives voting rights to Ghanaians outside the country. The NDC scribe said the parties had been invited to an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting of all political parties with an undisclosed agenda, only to be told by the Chairman of the Electoral Commission that the Commission had an obligation to implement ROPAA. The EC, according the party scribe, was therefore inviting inputs from the political parties on what criteria to use in establishing voting centres to practicalize the Act. He said the EC had proposed to set up registration centres in foreign nations that had no less than 500 Ghanaian residents, while the highest ranking government official in Ghana’s missions would be mandated to head the supervision of the exercise and the conduct of the ballots. “And then they are also thinking of limiting the Diaspora votes to the presidential elections. “We expressed our concerns and indicated our initial position; that there are no good ways of implementing a bad law. So we think that the law is a non starter, it cannot be implemented. “For instance any attempt at establishing criteria would be disenfranchising other people and we thought that the basis for bringing up the ROPA is to make sure that no Ghanaian is disenfranchised so …the regulation for its implementation cannot be the means of further disenfranchising other people.” He said the party had to walk out because it felt no need to stay on to discuss a law it had objected to as a bad law. Asiedu Nketia told Joy News the Convention peoples’ Party and the Democratic people’s Party also objected to the implementation but had stayed behind in the meeting hoping that they could convince the EC to drop the implementation. “We have stated that we would have nothing to do with its implementation. It could be implemented but we are going to declare our results based upon the voting in Ghana and that is it, if our president is the winner he is the winner!” he told Joy News.