Minority Spokesperson for Communications, Alhaji A. B. A. Fuseini is asking the government to withdraw the Legislative Instrument that will empower the Electoral Commission to compile a new Voters’ Register warning that there will be chaos at the registration centres.
The LI, when passed, will require people seeking to get a new Voters’ ID card to provide either a passport or a National Identification Card, birth certificate and current Voters’ ID card will not be accepted.
A.B.A Fuseini believes this will only result in chaos at the centres and the government should abandon this idea.
“I can tell you without a doubt that there would be chaos in the registration process because can you imagine Ghanaians and even people in my constituency come and line up, 60, 70-year-old men and women come to register and you deny them because they don’t have a Ghana Card?, it is needless, full of confusion, a waste of taxpayers money and must be abandoned,” he told Joy News.
Ever since the EC brought up the idea of compiling a new Voters’ Register, it has been met with fierce resistance from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as well as some other Civil Society groups.
The EC initially scheduled April 18, 2020, for the compilation of the new voters’ register ahead of the December 2020 elections but following the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus in the country it was postponed and a new date has not been announced.
They have on several occasions explained that Ghana needs a new Voters’ Register because it wants to ensure that the register that is used on the election day is more credible and efficient than the existing one hence the need for a new Biometric Voter Management System (BVMS).
Dr Serebour Quaicoe, Director of Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission (EC) says there is still a possibility that we may use the current Voters’ Register for the elections in December but it will need a lot of adjustment.
