GHANA’S biggest opposition party has held nationwide protests demanding an audit of the voter roll for the general election due in December.
Millions of supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) participated in Tuesday’s protests in regional capitals across the country, NDC MP Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said in a live broadcast on TV3.
“We are not asking for a big favour from the electoral commission. We are demanding our right to free and fair elections,” NDC chairman Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah told party members before the protest march in Accra.
Ghana has held peaceful, free, fair and transparent elections for nearly two decades. The general election on December 7 will be the ninth consecutive vote since multi-party democracy was restored in 1992.
The electoral commission described the opposition party’s call for a forensic audit as “misguided” during a press conference last week.
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana are held concurrently every four years. Current President Nana Akufo-Addo is stepping down this year after his second four-year term.
Former president John Dramani Mahama of the NDC, who lost in the 2016 and 2020 elections, is standing against Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia of New Patriotic Party in this year’s presidential election.