Former President, John Dramani Mahama has said that the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana appears determined to disenfranchise some Ghanaians by insisting on the Ghana card as the only source of identification for a voter card.
He stated in a tweet that the EC, instead of making it easy for citizens to take part in elections, rather takes delight in making it difficult.
The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, had indicated that the EC is creating a new voter register for the 2024 general polls.
“Our understanding as we pick it up is that the EC is desperately planning to discard the 2020 voters register and replace it with a new voter register, which will cause taxpayers and the people of Ghana 80 million dollars thereabout,” Haruna Iddrisu told journalists in Parliament on Tuesday, July 12.
But the Director of the Electoral Services Department at the EC, Dr Serebour Quaicoe, denied the claim.
He said the NDC has been missing in action at the IPAC meeting after the 2020 general elections and hence is unaware of what is happening within the EC.
He attributed what he describes as a false claim that the elections management body was compiling a new voters’ register to their failure to attend the meetings to be informed on the activities being undertaken by the body.
The EC explained that it is seeking to do a continuous voter registration exercise, an exercise which has been thoroughly discussed with the political parties at the IPAC meetings, meetings the NDC has stayed away from.
Speaking in an interview with TV3, Dr Serebuor Quacoe said “we are not compiling a new voters’ register. The one we compiled in 2020 is credible, and a very good register so we are not dispensing it. But you and I are aware that people have been saying that, why don’t you roll out continuous registration so that when somebody turns 18, the person goes to our offices and register.
“That is exactly what we are doing. What we are seeking to do is that we are coming out with a new Constitutional Instrument (CI) which we have had a series of Inter-Party Advisory meetings (IPAC) meetings with the political parties.
“The NDC has not been attending IPAC meetings of late, after 2020 they have not been attending but all the political parties have been attending and they can all attest to the fact that we have taken them through the new CI, we have discussed everything thoroughly.
“So, what we are saying is that, if people are going to register any day at our district offices, then they need some credible form of identification and it is possible that once it is going to continue the political parties will not be there to be guaranteeing or objecting to.
“So why don’t we emphasize the Ghana Card so that once you have your Ghana Card, we believe that you might have gone through the screening, so you come to our office with Ghana and we will enrol you onto the register. We are talking of continuous registration of people who have not registered, we are not using the data from the National Identification Authority (NIA).”
