The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said the just-ended voter registration exercise has corroborated its long-held stance that the old register was bloated. The party says it has been consistent in the advocacy for a new register, and the regulatory body, the Electoral Commission (EC), seeing the need to put together a new one, vindicates the party’s position.
“The 2019 register had a total of 16,845,420 voters. Apart from this, we also had 797,493 people quarantined on the Duplicates/Multiples and Exceptions lists. The political parties are aware of this. When this is added to the registered voters, the overall total is a little over 17.6 million.
“Had the Commission maintained the old register and conducted a Limited Registration Exercise in all electoral areas and registration centers across the country, we would have estimated to conservatively add about 2 million Ghanaians onto the existing register. Potentially, without the compilation of a new voters register, the Commission was on track to register some 19 million people, plus another 800,000 people who remain on the multiple and exceptions lists, who previously were denied the right to vote.
“This would have given us a total number of almost 19.6 million persons, approximately 20 million, had we maintained the old register and conducted the Limited Registration Exercise, as compared to the current figure of 16.63 million, some three million difference,” the party said.
Addressing a news conference in Accra yesterday, the General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu, noted that even though the Justice VCRAC Crabbe Commission’s report had confirmed the position of the NPP – that the old register was bloated – the EC continued to disagree to a new register until recently.
According to John Boadu, the late Justice Crabbe’s committee, constituted to look into their grievances in 2015, established that the old register, indeed, contained several categories of ineligible registrants, including multiple registrations, names of minors, names of foreigners and deceased persons.
He continued: “After its analysis of facts before it, the Crabbe Committee stated in page 10 of their report, that there is evidence that the register of voters contains a substantial number of people whose names are currently not valid. By all indications, the number of registered voters is not only unusually high, but it may be in excess of the potential number. Based on the 2012 projected population of Ghana provided by the Ghana Statistical Service, and discounting the population of foreigners, there were about 150,000 more individual records in the register of voters than the 2012 estimated population of persons aged 18 years and older of Ghanaian nationality. This would include some thousands of minors who were wrongly registered.”
He regretted that despite this overwhelming evidence, the EC insisted on not compiling a new register until recently, when it decided to change its stance.
Mr John Boadu also touched on the reservations of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the decision for a new voter register. He observed that despite enough justification by the EC, the NDC continued to stage strong protests against the commission’s move, and were bent on thwarting the EC’s efforts.
“All the arguments they made against the voter registration, including the issue of cost, wrong timing, misplaced priority, possibility of civil war among others, were all defeated by superior arguments in support of the exercise.
“Indeed, in the face of continued NDC protests, the EC convened its Eminent Persons Panel and met most of the political parties. The report of the meeting was that a majority of political parties wanted a new voter register,” he recounted.
Among other things, the NDC had challenged the Commission’s decision to exclude the previous voter card as proof of eligibility, but to accept only the Ghana Card and passport as breeder documents. The NDC said not many Ghanaians had the Ghana Card, and as such, they may be disenfranchised.
But, at the news conference yesterday, the NPP’s General Secretary said contrary to the claim, current data from the registration showed that more than 60% of registrants used the Ghana Card, 1.9% used passports, and 38% used guarantors.
“At the end of the exercise, nobody has complained of being disenfranchised for want of documentation. Clearly, the NDC’s argument was a deliberate ploy to stop the EC from conducting its constitutionally mandated function, and they’ve been exposed by events,” John asserted.
The post NEW REGISTER VINDICATES US appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS