Kumasi, July 07, GNA – Ashanti Regional Executives of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), have rallied their supporters to patronize the ongoing voter registration exercise.
The parties said it was important that the supporters trooped to the registration centres in their numbers to register to exercise their franchise in the December 7 elections.
“Our positive response to the exercise is critical to retaining the ruling NPP in power,” Mr. Kwasi Kyei Danso, the Regional Communications Director of the Party, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Kumasi.
Democracy, he said, was about numbers, stressing that NPP supporters had no reason to stay at home while the Electoral Commission (EC) conducted the exercise, meant to compile a new register for the upcoming elections.
Mr. Kyei Danso said the party was satisfied with the peaceful manner in which the registration had gone for the first phase of the exercise, explaining that the general conduct of the EC officials and security personnel was commendable.
The GNA gathered that at the end of the first phase of registration in the Region, a total of 364, 756 people had been registered, with 53.9 percent being female and 46.1 percent being male.
Of the total registrants, 72.3 percent went through the processes using the Ghana Card, while 1.7 percent registered with passports and 26 percent relying on guarantors to facilitate their registration.
Reacting to the ongoing exercise, the NDC Regional Chairman, Nana Akwasi Andrews, reminded their supporters of the need not to be left out of the registration.
They should take their destiny into their own hands as the party prepared to win the elections massively, he added.
He expressed concern over what he described as “the high presence of security personnel in strongholds of the party in the Region”, citing Asawasi and Drobonso.
“Most people feel intimidated with this development,” he noted and asked the authorities to look at this trend carefully since the nation was not at war.
GNA