“Why does the EC need to charge for monitoring public interest elections?” – Asiedu Nketiah asks

The Chairman of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has expressed his disappointment in the Electoral Commission for charging to supervise internal political party elections.

According to him, the EC is a state institution, while the internal elections of the various political parties are of public interest. For this reason, the NDC stalwart believes that the supervision must be free.

“We have taken a position before that if the internal party primaries are public elections then, the Electoral Commission is under obligation to conduct those elections for the party free of charge without any charge to the political party.”

“Because if it’s a state institution that has a constitutionally imposed duty to perform as far as our party is concerned, then why should they be charging us?” he quizzed

Mr. Asiedu Nketia also mentioned that the EC has made it clear that internal elections are not part of their constitutional obligations, hence any help sought from them must be paid for.

“So we have been paying for all those services including the current one,” he said.

According to him, internal elections will continue to remain the responsibility of the NDC.

However, he added that they involve the EC to promote neutrality and credibility, and therefore if at any point the EC feels hindered to supervise the elections, the NDC will still be in good standing to proceed.

“At any point in time when we get to the point where the neutral party we have engaged to help us select our candidates becomes challenging or unavailable, we reserve the right to resort to our own means of selecting our candidates,” he said.

The NDC is set to conduct its presidential and parliamentary primaries on Saturday, May 13, 2023. Voting is set to begin at 7:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Ahead of the elections, the party has had to resolve some internal issues.

One of them was the lawsuit by flagbearer aspirant, Dr Kwabena Duffour to stop the process.

But on Friday, May 12, an Accra High Court struck out Dr Duffour’s injunction application after his lawyers withdrew the case.

The party chairman has commended Dr Dufuor for choosing to resort to the party’s internal structures instead.