What Rawlings Told Obasanjo Over Voters’ Register

It has emerged that former President Jerry John Rawlings once wrote to ex-Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo virtually running down former President John Agyekum Kufuor over the voters’ register used in the 2004 general elections.

He claimed the register had been padded in the strongholds of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
ex-President Rawlings wrote to President Obasanjo, who was the Africa Union (AU) Chairman at the time and complained bitterly about how the Kufuor-led NPP government was going to use the register to shortchange his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which was led by former President Professor John Evans Atta Mills.

Ex-President Rawlings copied the said letter, which was written on October 24, 2004, to many world leaders at the time including Presidents George Bush Jnr and Jimmy Carter both from the United States.
Interestingly, the opposition NPP has also been complaining about the current voters’ register and soliciting international support but the NDC has accused the main opposition party of impugning the image of Ghana.

Volta and other regions

He specifically said people from the Volta and the three Northern regions, which were the strongholds of then opposition NDC, were deliberately being disenfranchised by the Kufuor government through the compilation of the voters’ register.
He said that 700,000 names of eligible voters principally in the Volta and Northern Regions had been removed from the register by President Kufuor deliberately or otherwise.
He also informed the world leaders that the Kufuor administration was interfering in the work of the Electoral Commission (EC) and intimidating its officials.

“In the run-up to these elections, the Government has engaged in various acts that can only derail the possibility of a free, fair and transparent process of determining the will of the Ghanaian people,” he claimed.