EC gradually becoming a tyrant , NDC may lose the battle if Ghanaians and NPP stay quiet

Ghana is home to over 30 million people according to the last census and majority of them are either voters or people closer to the voting age. The political twins in Ghana, the NDC and NPP are both on a mission to either annex or retain the seat of government in the 2024 general elections and are busily using ‘ways and means’ to ensure they are on the advantage side when the race is started.

A key tool in deciding who becomes president or member of parliament on January 7 and 6, 2024 respectively is the voter ID card and who is allowed to handle the ID card is the current issue raising numerous questions.

The Vice President recently said it is only a matter of time and the problems associated with Voter Registrations will be over. He is banking his hopes on the ‘almighty Ghana Card’ that is worth more than 1,000 interchanges per the assessment of the ‘Wizard of Economics’. That was only adding some salt to the injury of the opposition National Democratic Congress who for some reasons have been at loggerheads with the country’s electoral organizing body, the Electoral Commission led by the ‘mathematician of the century’ Madam Jean Adukwei Mensah.

General Mosquito and his charges may have very valid reasons to not trust any words coming from the Jean Mensah-led commission due to their past experiences especially in 2020 when they thought they were in another “comfortable lead” only to realize that it was the tea without biscuits that caused them to actually miss the figures. General is known for silencing his opponents in other areas of politics but not in the mathematical side and he probably dreads the idea of mounting a witness box to calculate mathematics questions with a faulty calculator especially one that the quiz master is not Prof Elsie Effah Kaufman but a panel of seven led by Chief Justice Kwesi-Anin Yeboah.

The Electoral Commission wants to make the Ghana Card the sole source document to verify if someone is a Ghanaian and eligible to register as a voter. This is a departure from previous instances where the birth certificate, the passport and a registered voter were used as sources to verify citizenship of persons before they registered as voters.

In the last elections where the EC compiled a new register amidst failed resistance from the NDC, the Ghana Card and the Passport were the key documents that were used. It however, allowed for persons who had none of the required documents to be registered through the guarantor system but now wants to move away from that.

That decision to ditch the guarantor system is what the NDC is vehemently fighting against and has distanced itself from any agreements that purportedly links to using the Ghana Card as the sole document to register new voters.

Reports were earlier rife that the election organizing body wanted to create a new register and that sparked the anger of many but a quick response from the EC through its Director of Electoral Service Dr Serebour Quaicoe in an interview with TV3 on July 14 calmed nerves.

According to Dr Serebour, the EC is “not compiling a new voters’ register. The one we compiled in 2020 is a credible one, 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”.

They are only trying to satisfy Ghanaians wish for a continuous registration exercise where people who turn 18 can go and acquire a Voter ID without having to wait for a mass registration exercise.

“That is exactly what we are doing. What we are seeking to do is that we are coming out with a new Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) which we have had a series of Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings with the political parties,” Dr Serebour explained.

But if it is true that the EC wants to just ensure there is an open chance for people to register as Voters once they turn 18, why must it be the Ghana Card that is used but no other document? Why can’t people have a guarantors to enable them go through the exercise?

It is common for people born now to acquire a birth certificate than it is for them to get a Ghana Card. This is because at some hospitals/health facilities there are people who are readily available to register new born babies and get them enrolled on the National Births Register. In remote communities and villages where most of the people give birth at home, some of those communities have people who go around registering new births and the child often get the birth certificate early his or her life.

A parent is a proper source document of citizenship of any child than any document ever created by humans so eliminating the guarantor system means that a parent who is s registered voter or identifiable citizen cannot even vouch for his or her child as a citizen. And if Ghana recognizes me as a Ghanaian, how will it then not recognize my child as Ghanaian because my child has no Ghana Card?

Some Ghanaians living abroad can acquire the Ghana Passport at the Ghana Embassy or High Commissions in the various countries but they for now cannot acquire a Ghana Card over there. So assuming Mr and Mrs Kofi Agyekum had their child in the United Kingdom. Both have the Ghana Card, have the Ghanaian passport, have registered and voted in previous elections. Their son, Kofi Gyan just turned 18 and arrived in Ghana a few months to the election and wants to acquire his voter ID card in order to vote but the EC tells him to go get a Ghana Card to prove his citizenship. Is that not weird, backwards and wasteful?

The National Identification Authority, the body clothed with the power to register and provide Ghanaians with the Ghana Card have a guarantor system that allows people who do not have the source documents [birth certificate and Passport] to obtain the Ghana Card once they can get a relative to guaranteed that they are Ghanaians. So why is the EC afraid to use its own guarantor system but feel comfortable using that of another institution?

Going back to the weird thinking of some of our institutions especially the EC, it beats ones imagination to understand how a document that guaranteed me the Ghana Card that in turn guarantees me a voter card is not qualified to guarantee me the voter card.

The NDC may be against with all their might and many may think it is political and a normal trend since the two parties [NDC and NPP] have never agreed on anything and since the oppositions in Ghana always have issues with government institutions, it is just a tradition, but this goes beyond party differences or tradition.

Ghana’s electoral system is being filtered in a way that soon it is easy for the Electoral Commission to boldly request for certain unreasonable things to be passed as law in the name of enabling them to organize elections successfully.

However, the success of an election does not reside on how you managed to kick many people out but actually how many of the eligible people were actually afforded the chance to exercise their franchise is major determinant of success. With the current trajectory of the EC, it is not far from possible for the EC to say if you have never voted in an election in the country then you are not qualified to vote.

The laws of Ghana establishing the Electoral Commission do not clothe the commission with the power to determine who a voter is. The law is explicit and without any shadows of doubt. It says “The Electoral Commission shall have the following functions:

a. to compile the register of voters and revise it at such periods as may be determined by law;
b. to demarcate the electoral boundaries for both national and local government elections;
c. to conduct and supervise all public elections and referenda;
d. to educate the people on the electoral process and its purpose;
e. to undertake programmes for the expansion of the registration of voters; and
f. to perform such other functions as may be prescribed by law”.

But decisions of the electoral commission in the past few years have been nothing less than usurping Parliament’s duties and trusting itself with powers undefined in national law. Their actions have been favoured by the NDC and NPP who depending on their status at the time of the decision either support or fight the EC. Every true and reasonable party would take the side of Ghanaians and be on the EC to do the right thing.

The most successful Electoral Commission Chairperson in the history of the Commission, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan is no exclusion and has seen that the institution he wants led that was revered and respected is taking the wrong turn as he summed it up during an interview with Graphic Online.

“Ghanaian citizens don’t lose their citizenship if they are 18 years or older but do not have the Ghana Card. So, the moot question is: why to make the Ghana Card the only means of identification for purposes of establishing eligibility to register to vote,” the respected former EC boss wondered.

So it is not a fight that is for the NDC alone but one that should be for Ghanaians and all concerned. The NPP needs to support this fight and put pressure on the EC to think and act right. May be the Elephant family is heavily engrossed in nursing the wounds of its fallen leaders and trying to patch the cracks in its bid to break an 8 that has already been broken by fuel prices and the US Dollar and may come to the party late after they have been rejected at the polls by Ghanaians by which time it would have been too late to act.

Using the Ghana Card as the voter ID card in the future is a dream I would want to see as reality because I definitely hate carrying multiple cards around. So if the EC had proposed that more resources be added to the NIA to enable it register every Ghanaian so that at election 2024 and beyond we can just walk to the polling station with out Ghana Cards and vote instead of carrying a voter ID card it would have been something Ghanaians [majority] would praise the Jean Mensah-led commission of acting outright and highly reasonable in a long time.

I would recommend the Umbrella family for the fight. It may be that they are doing it with a political motive or fear of being in a “comfortable lead” and ending up with calculators in the Supreme Court’s court room but regardless of their motive, this is a fight worth joining by every reasonable Ghanaian. If you do not join, I didn’t say you are not reasonable. That could be your conscience hunting you.

To the NPP, please, for the first time in a long time, do needful and join this crusade to stop the EC from becoming a tyrant in the country where democracy supposedly is the pride and the only real marketable thing. We are proud of our democracy and should not let a temporary decision of a select few cause a permanent damage.

Long Live Ghana. May common sense be very common for those who really need it!!!

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