News:
Minority Leader
July 12, 2022
The Minority in Parliament has lashed out at the Electoral Commission for making plans to spend another fortune to compile a new register for the 2024 elections with the Ghana card as the only source of identification. The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, addressing the Parliamentary Press Corps on Tuesday, July 12, 2022 said the development is a matter of democratic concern as it threatens the stability of our country since it concerns the right of a Ghanaian citizen to vote.
“The Electoral Commission of Ghana is desperately planning to discard the 2020 voter register which cost the taxpayer about $80m and replace it with a new voter register. In 2020, the EC against all sound and technical advice replaced the 2016 biometric voters register. We all recall that this decision of the Commission was without consensus by all political parties, civil society and all critical election stakeholders”. He said that registration exercise in 2020 by the EC currently put the voter population of our country at over 17.4 million.
“Our understanding is that the EC is seeking through a constitutional instrument to make the National ID card the only source of justification to register onto the voter register”. Asserts that their primary concern is that, in the past since 1993 voter registration exercise undertaken will normally have the provision of a guarantor in so far as it is established that they are Ghanaians and are of age and of sound mind to participate in Ghana’s Electoral process to vote and be voted for.
“Our understanding further, which is our primary technical concern is that the National ID Card is not available to Ghanaians who deserve to have it”, stating that there are many Ghanaians who are still struggling to have access to a national ID card. “This must be made increasingly available to every qualified Ghanaian”. “Currently, the National Identification Authority has registered over 16,654,000 million persons, printed 16,341,000 million number of cards and issued 13,300,000 cards against a voter register of 17 million. Juxtaposing these figures show a critical technical imbalance” he stated.
He said we may not have a voters register to rely on for the conduct of the 2024 Parliamentary and Presidential elections because the number of Ghanaians on the voter register far exceeds that on the national ID card data. “And yet the National ID card has other persons including foreigners on it”. According to him, the EC by law and duty ought to have conducted limited voter registration exercise in 2021 and 2022 which they failed to undertake; therefore eligible Ghanaians who have attained the ages of 18 years and above have been denied the opportunity to get registered and exercise their right to vote as Ghanaian citizens.
“The NDC when it regains power will deploy a new technology that allows anyone who attains 18 years to walk into any office of the EC and get registered”.
Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com