We have taken note of an orchestrated attempt by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and its
General Secretary to demonise former President John Dramani Mahama, after the latter
had urged the government to back down from its ethnic bigotry and voter suppression
agenda in the just-ended registration of voters.
It is important to remind the NPP General Secretary, and the drafters of his statement which he presented at a press conference on Monday, that Mr Mahama as leader and flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot be blamed for the sins of the NPP and the government during the registration of voters, especially in the strongholds of the NDC.
Indeed, Mr Mahama, as a president who handed over a peaceful and united country, owes
it a duty to call the government out for its divisive and ethnic bigotry in the run up to, and
during, the voter registration exercise.
It is trite knowledge, and video evidence abound on social media, that heavily-armed
uniformed personnel and in some cases NPP thugs operating under the cover of National
Security, were deployed by the government to harass and intimidate eligible voters in the
strongholds of the NDC, including the Volta and Oti Regions, as part of a grand agenda to
disenfranchise the people and thereby suppress votes in those areas.
In some cases, eligible Ghanaians were physically removed from registration queues and
prevented from registering simply because security personnel and political actors who are
not vested with powers to determine Ghanaian citizenship pronounced them non-Ghanaians.
There are also many reports of people who were denied their right to register
simply because they could not speak a particular language.
We have also received reports of deliberate frustrations and impediments that were put in
the way of settler communities, particularly in NPP strongholds, throughout the country to
ensure that not many of them could get their names on the new voter register.
