The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has scrapped its biometric register to pave the way for processes to begin on a new membership registration to be conducted manually.
The decision, which was part of the recommendations by the Kwesi Botchwey Election Review Committee, and approved Thursday by the National Executive Committee of the party, seeks to restore the integrity of the party’s membership register.
Announcing the decision Tuesday in Accra, National Chairman of NDC, Kofi Portuphy, said the decision to scrap the old register used for the conduct of last year’s elections of the party did not meet the required standards, which he said led to the defeat of the party in the 2016 general elections.
Per the recommendation of the election review committee, he said “NEC has voted for the scrapping of the register used to conduct the party’s internal election last year”.
A manual registration process, he said, would be used from November this year at the party’s branches across the country to register all NDC members. Again, he said it is intended to revive the branches of the party, which he said is an “entry point” for membership.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the register which was meant to be a biometric one did not meet the standards required to make it qualify to be a biometric register. NEC has therefore decided that we should adopt a manual process of catching the names of members at all branches nationwide,” Mr Portuphy explained.
“We’ll use a manual process to capture the names of members; registered members of our party nationwide,” he added.
The various processes to be used for the manual capturing of names into the register has been developed.
The manual register, he said, would form the foundation for a new biometric register in the future.
“It will be the basis for a future biometric register to be built by the party. What we are doing now is intended to restore the intergrity of our register and will become the basis for the creation of a biometric register,” the chairman said.
He urged members of the party to support the new manual process and register at the polling station at their respective branch offices.
“It is important for every member of our party to believe that we are starting the membership registration anew and it must be at the branch, nowhere else”.
Mr. Portuphy said a lot of people were not happy with the biometric registration exercise last year, noting it “cost us a lot” hence the party has no option than to discard the old register.
He has meanwhile appealed to party members whose activities did not make the old register serve a useful purpose not to attempt to “perpetuate those activities again” because the party will this time “not entertain it”.
NEC, he said, has approved a timetable for the party to use to conduct its elections from the branch level to the national level.
Election Timetable
* Branch election will be held in the last week of January 2018
* Constituency elections will be between March 24 and 25, 2018,
* Regional youth and women caucus zongo elections between June 2 and 3, 2018,
* Regional elections June 9-10, 2018
* National youth and women elections on July 13-14, 2018,
* National elections July 27-29, 2018
By Stephen Kwabena Effah|3news.com|Ghana
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