General News of Tuesday, 19 June 2018
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2018-06-19
PPP Policy Advisor, Kofi Asamoah Siaw
Leadership of the Progressive People’s Party have questioned the Minority in Parliament’s stance on pushing for the voter’s ID to be used as a means of identification in the requirement of the National Identification process. Addressing a packed room of journalists, Policy Advisor of the party Kofi Asamoah Siaw posited that the incidence of some non-Ghanaians procuring the voter’s card in the buildup to some elections in the past due to the acceptance of the National Health insurance card to register for it bared it to a number of anomalies.
“When the Electoral Commission organized a debate on the new voter register on 29th and 30th October 2015, the PPP admitted that the current voters’ register compiled in 2012 and all the ones before that have had problems and the need for a National ID Card is sine qua non. Today, we are surprised that one of the requirements the NDC MPs are pushing to be used as means of identification is the voter ID cards when we all know that the voter’s ID card in its current state is not credible. In any event, if anyone says that he or she is a Ghanaian, but cannot provide a passport or a birth certificate, or does not have a relative, how did they get a Voter’s ID card in the first place?” Mr. Asamoah Siaw quizzed.
He further noted that the Electoral Commission as an institution was only mandated to collate data and not be a source information and as a result could not substantiate the validity of the nationality of a Ghanaian.
“We have read extensively, the constitutional provisions that created the EC, the Act of Parliament that confirms the institution of the EC, and the various regulations passed by the EC, from the C.I. 12 to C.I. 72, and wish to state unequivocally that the EC has no legal capacity to decide who is a Ghanaian and who is not. It is also sound to say that the EC lacks the practical know-how to create the source information required to ensure that only Ghanaians of age 18 years and above are on the voters’ register, for the purposes of public elections in this country. The problem many people have with the Voter Register has been occasioned because the EC has insisted in the past on being an agent of compilation and or revision of the voters’ register as well as the creator of the source information. The laws that created the EC never granted her the power and authority to create the source information; it only gave her the power to compile from the source information.”
Background
The Minority in Parliament decided to boycott the ongoing national registration and issuance of the Ghana card because the NIA, in compliance with the law, decided to accept only passports and birth certificates as primary documents in the registration process.
In the absence of those two documents, a person hoping to be registered must be vouched for by his relative or by two other persons who must have been registered already.
These provisions were contained in a new law unanimously passed by Parliament last year. Both the NDC and the NPP parliamentarians agreed that voters ID must be taken out of the list of documents used for the national registration.
However, when the NIA began implementing the law in its registration process, the NDC has made a U-turn.
According to them, the NIA by refusing to use the voters’ ID as proof of citizenship will disenfranchise a number of Ghanaians most of who do not have a passport or a birth certificate.
They are also raising issues about the cost of the registration process which they say is too exorbitant.
Some two persons have since taken the matter to court, with the Minority hoping to follow suit.