While Ghana’s electoral authority insists it will not use a biometric voting system for the country’s 2012 elections, political parties and religious groups continue to urge it to reconsider the decision to ensure credible polls.
The country’s Electoral Commission chairman, Dr Kojo Afari-Gyan said last month that it (commission) had no intention of introducing a biometric voting system for the 2012 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.
The commission, however, said it was compiling a biometric voters’ registration, which has no logical relationship with a biometric voting system, hence, campaigners of a verification mechanism should stop misconstruing the process.
The representatives of the political parties and religious leaders, at a just ended seminar in the Upper West Region, northern Ghana, said the issue of biometric registration and a verification system was a major way of ensuring free, fair and transparent elections next year.
A communiqué the groups issued urged the government to support the biometric registration process and a verification mechanism with the necessary funds to enable the EC to use it for the next year’s polls.
The Regional Peace Advisory Council (RPAC) in collaboration with the Regional Coordinating Council with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) organised the seminar.
The political parties and religious leaders resolved to educate their members to desist from inflammatory comments in the media and on political platforms and pledged to do everything possible to reduce electoral fraud in the 2012 polls.
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