By Edzorna Francis Mensah
Parliament has adopted the report on new C.I, before moving into Committee of the whole to meet the officials from the EC and the NIA on the Draft C.l. – Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations 2022 and Other Related Matters of the Electoral Commission of Ghana and subject it to further consideration by the House.
During the debate to adopt the report, Members of Parliament were divided over the intention to introduce the new Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) sponsored by the Electoral Commission to regulate upcoming public elections.
As usual, the minority side vehemently kicked against many of the new clauses proposed by the Commission, as they argued that the new C.I., when passed in its current form and shape, will deny many qualified citizens who, by no fault of their own, have no Ghana Card. On the new C.l. for the 2024 Reforms: Continuous Registration and the Use of Ghana Card, the Chairperson meeting the committee explained for the record that officially no C.L. has been presented to Parliament as is being alleged.
However, “as has been the convention and practice of the House, the Commission engaged the Subsidiary Legislation Committee to solicit the inputs of the Members to enrich the draft C.I. as part of the process before it is finally presented to the House for approval.”
The Presentation by the Chairperson at the committee level made submissions, among others to be considered by the Commission in reviewing the new C.I. to improve the voter registration exercise and the entire electoral processes by removing or expunging of the guarantor system as part of the reforms and some Committee members particularly from the Minority side urged the Commission to take a second look at its own laws in relation to the use of the Ghana Card as the sole medium of identifying any Ghanaian citizen eligible to register by the EC.
Some of the Committee members were of the view that this intention or contemplated regulation may contravene the Commission’s own law, the Public Elections Registration, which makes provision for a guarantee form to be completed and signed by two registered persons to qualify a person as a citizen of Ghana to be enrolled by the Commission.
They also noted the Commission’s over-reliance on the NIA, drawing attention to the laws that established the Commission and establishing mandates that do not immediately link the NIA to Ghana’s democratic processes, requiring the Commission to take responsibility and reducing the attempt to make the NIA’s operations a part of the process.
Again, the Commission was informed about the outcomes of meetings held in Parliament between the NIA and the Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs Committee. In these meetings, the NIA enumerated a number of persistent pertinent challenges the authority is confronted with and which it has not been able to resolve since the Ghana Card registration was introduced.
These challenges include budgetary constraints, lack of offices and registration centres, inaccessible networks, a lack of power supply in many areas, bad road networks, travel distances people have to commute to the registration centres, lack of basic equipment and vehicles for the staff of the Authority, etc.
In view of these critical challenges, the Committee implores the EC to be mindful and ensure that no eligible person of Ghanaian citizenship is disenfranchised in the process by its insistence on the use of the Ghana Card as the only medium to qualify a person to be registered. At The end of the preliminary debates on the motion, a quotation was put on it, and the “YES” was for the house to move in the Committee of the whole for further deliberation.
And finally, Speaker Alban Bagbin ruled, “the report is adopted subject to review at the Committee of the Whole meeting”. The people invited to the Committee Of The Whole include: the finance minister, Ken Ofori Ata; and one of his Deputies and Abena Osei-Asare; Deputy EC Chair, Bossmas Asare; leading the team with the Director of Electoral Services, Dr Serebour Quaicoe and the Executive Secretary of National Identification Authority, Ken Agyeman Attafuah. leading a 12 member team.
