A new politico-judicial theory originating from the ‘Kwasia Bi Nti’ camp of the Adabraka head office reads like this: “Every idiot can go to court.” The jury is still out on whether or not those who went to court recently to compel the Electoral Commission to use the old voters’ identification card as a basis for acquiring the new card for the 2020 vote, are idiots.
Certainly, the interpretation given to the verdict on Thursday by General Mosquito, to me, looks all the way idiotic. The Supreme Court shot down all the reliefs sought by the National Democratic Congress in its suit against the Electoral Commission. The seven-member panel, headed by the Chief Justice, His Lordship Justice Kwasi Anim Yeboah, did not give the NDC any relief.
Other panelists were Mr. Justice Victor Mawulorm Dotse, certainly my man on the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Baffoe-Bonnie, Mr. Justice S.K. Marful-Sau, Mr. Justice N.A. Amegatcher, and Mr. Justice Prof. N.A. Kotey.
The court’s thrust of the ruling on Thursday is that the Electoral Commission has a constitutional mandate to compile a new voters register, as contained in the amended 2020 Constitutional Instrument (CI 126).
The justices also made a declaration affirming that upon a true and proper interpretation of the provisions of the Constitution, particularly Article 42, upon the registration of and issuance of a voter identification card to a person, that person has an accrued right to vote, which cannot be divested in an arbitrary and capricious manner. This was granted pursuant to Public (Regulation of voters) Amendment Regulation C1 126.
All that the long English here seeks to say is that the Electoral Commission has a right to compile a new register on the basis of the new Constitutional Instrument 126, which has just been passed by Parliament. In other words, the Electoral Commission cannot be compelled to use any other identification card other than what is prescribed in CI 126, which is what the EC says it is doing. It is as clear as today is Monday, that the NDC lost on all counts in court.
Trust the National Democratic Congress and its archaic propaganda means of doing things. Immediately the court rose, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah, alias Gen. Mosquito, General Secretary of the NDC, and the man some of us associate most with all that is wrong in the party Jerry Rawlings founded, spoke to the media and announced that the court had granted the party’s relief of making a declaration ordering the Electoral Commission to use the old and discarded voters’ identification card in the composition of the new voters ID for the 2020 polls.
In the General Secretary’s view, the NDC had been vindicated in court, when, in actual fact, the NDC had been given a bloody nose.
Read what the NDC scribe told the media: “We feel vindicated because the court, itself, in an earlier ruling, clearly stated that the possession of an existing voter’s ID card means that the holder is a citizen of Ghana, who is qualified to be registered and to exercise his or her power.”
Read Mr. Asiedu Nketia further: “So the court couldn’t have gone back on its earlier ruling. And it also did admit that the right to vote, once is accrued to a person, cannot be taken back in the whimsical and capricious manner in which the Electoral Commission sought to do.”
In typical NDC style, the lawyers for the plaintiff, who should have educated the masses on the ruling, stood by nodding while the NDC General Secretary was goofing badly.
The Akans, the largest tribal grouping in Ghana, would tell you: Se Wo Maame Ewu Na Wose Woda A, Ebesore Enyimbire Na Wonoa Eduane Ama Wo Ma Yawhe. Loosely translated, it says: If your mother is dead and you announce to the world that she is only sleeping. She would wake up at dinner time and cook for you for all of us to see.
The NDC and its leadership are at liberty to turn up at the various registration centres and register for the 2020 vote using the old and discarded voters’ ID card. But the leadership of the political party Jerry John Rawlings founded must realise by now that the game is up.
Over the years, the issue of aliens participating in our local elections has been contentious. Since 1992, when the Fourth Republican Constitution was promulgated and allowed the free choice of leadership of this country through the electoral system, the leadership of the New Patriotic Party especially, has always cried foul on foreign participation.
The leadership of the political party with centre right ideology has always contended that foreign participation was responsible for the large numbers of votes registered for our elections. They point to figures returned from the Volta Region, especially Ketu South, as non-representative of the actual votes cast.
In 2016, the figures were way down on what were recorded previously, particularly in 2012. In Ketu South, for instance, as many as 130,000 votes were recorded in 2012 and many previous votes. Strangely, the figures fizzled out to as little as 35,000 in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary votes.
The NPP attributed this low turn-out to the work of their agents who were said to have turned away many potential voters from Togo to shore up the NDC vote especially.
Last week, a journalist, who prefers to remain unanimous, did some work in Ketu South and the Togolese capital Lomé, and claimed to have established the fact that a large number of Togolese contingents were usually brought in to the Ketu South Constituency to cast their votes.
A number of men and women interviewed in Aflao claimed to have observed a large army of voters brought from Togo in to vote. They said their intonation and accent gave them away. One resident of Aflao said during elections in Ghana, the Ketu South and North constituencies were always buzzing with the influx of Togolese.
Like Joseph, the father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Bible, who took his pregnant wife, Mary, to his hometown Bethlehem to register to pay taxes on the orders of Emperor Augustus Caesar and ended up with the son Jesus Christ being born in a manger because there was no place in the inn, most of those who claim to be Ghanaians in Togo, and who come home to vote, had nowhere to stay.
“They invariably end of being housed in classrooms and other temporary accommodations. Let us not kid ourselves, these are alien voters. We all know,” the man said on video.
A Togolese young man interviewed on video agreed with the journalist that coming down to Ghana to vote was the norm, rather than the exception. This is what he told his Ghanaian interviewer. “The economic situation in Togo is so bad and biting that some of Togolese looked up to Ghanaians coming to recruit them to vote in Ghana elections in return for a good pay.”
Said he: “It is an exercise we look forward to. I don’t think it will end without Ghanaian authorities taking decisive action on it.”
In the run-up to the 2016 vote, Mr. Sylvester Mensah, then Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Scheme, in the company of Mr. Asiedu Nketia and other officials of the NDC, were caught on camera issuing NHIS cards to some people in Lomé. They claimed that they were in the Togolese capital to woo Ghanaians in Togo to come down and register to vote in our elections.
Discerning Ghanaians knew exactly what the NDC big shots were doing in Lomé that day. If you found the NDC in court seeking an order from the Supreme Court to compel the Electoral Commission to use the discarded old voter’s identification card as part of the requirement for registration in the Electoral Commission’s exercise, beginning throughout the country tomorrow, that is your answer.
The Fourth Republican Constitution is 28 years old. It was promulgated in 1992. After 28 years of existence, our electoral process must be robust enough to guarantee free, fair and transparent elections. We cannot afford to have our electoral process hijacked by foreigners.
That is why it is my hope that the decision to exclude the old and bogus identification card will begin the exercise of cleaning the voters’ register. One of the contentious issues in our voting system has been several complaints, especially from the leadership of the NPP, is that the voters register is full of ineligible voters.
Apart from many dead people whose names are still allegedly displayed in the master list in the EC’s engine room, the issue of alien voters would not go away. That is why the compilation of an entirely new register is welcome.
My information is that the military has been deployed on a tour of this country’s eastern border with Togo. No reason has officially been given for the exercise, but I do not believe we need any ghost to tell us why. For me, it is a clear signal that this country would not allow any alien to cross over and mess up with our registration exercise.
I hear those who have been benefitting from aliens voting in Ghana in previous elections are making ugly noises over the presence of the military at various border posts in the country.
I will urge the military on to be even more vigilant. We need a clean voters’ register which is the exact representation of the voting public of this republic.
The time to compile one is now!
I shall return!
Ebo Quansah in Accra
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s editorial stance
The post Time to compile a clean voters’ register is now! appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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