The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said that the party strongly objects to the establishment of regional collation centres as proposed by the Electoral Commission (EC).

According to Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, the "animal called regional collation" will not be entertained again because the party believes that it is unconstitutional and not helpful.

“That is why we believe that the previous arrangement where results of a presidential collation are collated at the constituency level and transmitted directly to the EC headquarters must be the order of the day because in between the constituency office and the National Office, crosschecking becomes very easy for political parties to cross check results that have been transmitted from the constituency to the national electoral commission headquarters,” he stressed.

He added that “At the end of the day if you bring aggregated result from the regional collation centres to the national collation centre, your agents there don’t even have the opportunity of cross-checking what aggregated into the regional collated result that have been brought at the national collation centre. It is unacceptable and that created a lot of credibility for the 2020 election."

Speaking at a press conference held Thursday, May 20 at the party’s headquarters, Mr Ampofo further disclosed that the party has set up a dynamic committee that has been tasked to produce the party’s comprehensive proposals for electoral reforms.

He added that the committee has been given a timeline of six weeks to avail the comprehensive proposals for reforms to the public, EC and stakeholders for deliberation.

“The committee is headed by the Venerable Lawyer Nana Ato Dadzie which has Professor Kwamina Ahwoi and several other leading legal numeric and senior members of the party working on that committee."

Mr. Ofosu Ampofo stated that there is no “need for any intermediary between the constituency and the national Electoral Commission when it comes to the collation and announcing of the presidential results.”

He said this was because the country has a national returning officer for the presidential elections, who is the Electoral Commission Chairperson, adding that “no one is given any constitutional right to play that role at any intermediary level.”