The National Democratic Congress (NDC) says it will not support the application of funds towards the acquisition of the biometric verification being demanded by some stakeholders.
According to the General Secretary of the party, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketiah the party would rather place premium on issues of security and intimidations during elections rather than biometric verification which in the opinion of the party was not a panacea to rigging elections.
�Polling station security is paramount than bringing in machines which would still make way for �machoism� across board�, �the General Secretary stated.
He was reacting to calls by some stakeholders particularly the Catholic Bishops Conference on the need to incorporate the biometric verification as part of the biometric registration exercise during next year�s general elections.
He indicated that the country had since 1992 made haste slowly in its democratic and electoral growth even though technology had existed at that time.
While describing the Bishop�s call as immature, he said the system being advocated for had never been tried anywhere in Africa, let alone guaranteeing a 100 per centage efficacy rate.
He explained that although the verification process could be an improvement if the right conditions were in place, there was the need to learn to crawl before one walks.
Electoral development processes he said were a budding one, and �we have come to a point where we think there are burning issues that needed immediate attention�, he argued.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah wondered why the issue of the bloated voter register in the 2008 elections of which some 1million fake names were identified were not of interest to the stakeholders whom he described as �apostles of verifications�.
He said that the ability of party agents to drive away opposing party agents in their stronghold as well ought to be of great concern than people narrowing the arguments down to government�s being perverse to funding for the process.
He queried that should issues of security be ignored, biometric machines placement in people�s stronghold could lead to a possible hijacked, thereby denying electorates their franchise.
�Our colleagues argue for verification first before security, but the NDC think that if security concerns were addressed sufficiently, without any biometric voting, the manual verification currently in place would be adequate for our purpose in any election as no party agent would allow the system to cheat them�, he highlighted.
Asked whether the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP)�s threat to pull out of next year�s elections if the verification were not in place, Mr Asiedu-Nketiah said that the NDC would not be cajoled by the NPP.
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