Excluding Old Voters’ ID Card from New Registration Exercise Unreasonable – NDC

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described as “unreasonable and unconstitutional”, the move by the Electoral Commission (EC) to exclude the existing voters identification cards from the list of valid documents required for new registration of eligible voters.

According NDC alleged that, the required documents being constricted to passports and Ghana Card – whose registration is yet to be completed – shows the ploy of the EC to disenfranchise many eligible voters.

The NDC’s Director of Elections, Mr. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah made the assertions while addressing a press conference in Accra on Thursday, May 21.

He  said the EC’s position is contrary to its earlier stance that the Ghana Card was not going to be used whatsoever in the pending 2020 elections.

“The point has to be made, that the existing voters ID card is the most widely available identification document in Ghana with over 16 million holders and has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Ghana as the best prima facie evidence of voter eligibility in the Abu Ramadan Case. It is the identification document with the strictest, most rigorous and transparent acquisition procedure, and has been used in the compilation of all voter registers since the inception of the Fourth Republic (19196, 2004 & 2012),” he said.

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The NDC also described as a lie, claims by officers of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), that political parties were consulted on proposals to amend CI 91 at an IPAC meeting on March 25, 2020.

Elvis Afriyie Ankrah said no such consultations with political parties took place and that claims to the contrary by the NPP cannot be true. He said the matter was neither on the agenda of the said IPAC meeting nor was it captured in the meeting in the records of the said meeting as having been discussed.

“In any case, the proposed CI was laid in Parliament on 17th March, 2020, EIGHT (8) clear days before the 25th March, 2020 IPAC meeting in question,” he pointed out, saying it is preposterous for the General Secretary of the NPP to suggest that the proposed CI was discussed at IPAC eight days after it had been laid in Parliament.

The NDC maintained that registration requirements provided under the proposed CI which has been laid in Parliament to govern what it said was “the needless, illogical and wasteful new voter registration exercise”, are too narrow and wholly inadequate for purposes of identifying the about 18 million eligible voters.