IMANI and its anti-EC allies, including the IPRAN rebels, made a truckload of assertions which, in their view, should have led to the old register being edited and maintained.
They raised eyebrows over the timing of the exercise, value for money, their confidence in the obsolete registration equipment and the other justifiable reasons the Electoral Commission adduced for the exercise.
In their estimation, the persistent plaguing of the country by COVID-19 would also adversely affect any exercise that would seek to compile a new register for the 2020 elections.
To the extent that IMANI uncharitably cast doubts on the number of people the Commission could register within forty days (12 million), they had the preconceived idea that the Electoral Commission was heading into a quagmiry dungeon, a dangerous place with no hope of image redemption.
Despite the oodles of negative vibes, sentiments, campaigns and crusades waged against the EC in its bid to embark upon its constitutionally-obligated exercise, the registration exercise was not only successful and conducted within the timeframe scheduled for same but it is being adjudged by many a Ghanaian as the most successful registration exercise in our recent history.
One key reason that heralded the need for a new register by a wide section of Ghanaians was the bloatedness of the 2019 register. Though the Commission is yet to audit the newly compiled electoral roll with the view to ridding it of unwanted and duplicated names, the figures of the 2019 and 2020 registers evidently justifies the belief by many that the old register was bloated.
One doesn’t need to be a genius to come to the conclusion that 16,845,420 people on the 2019 register is higher than the 16, 663, 699 recorded in the 2020 register. If the 2019 register had been maintained and a limited exercise favoured, around 3 million people would have been captured, thereby sending the numbers to almost 20 million.
We currently do not only have the most credible register since the 4th Republican Constitution was birthed but we also have a register without our ECOWAS friends occupying spaces therein. Though IMANI’s Franklin Cudjoe still contends the register was not bloated, he has refused to look at the numbers and is blinded by their stoically stance against the decision to compile the new register by the EC.
The numbers as we have seen, make a mincemeat of the claims by those who were vehement in their opposition to the compilation of the new register. They should eat the humble pie and admit that they trekked on the wrong path and they would be forgiven.
It is about time some people realized that they are not the repositories of knowledge on everything under the sun.
