Draft CI for 2024 Elections: EC has a hidden agenda - Asiedu Nketia alleges
Johnson Asiedu Nketia (left) and the EC Chair, Jean Mensa (right)
General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of having a hidden motive behind its proposed C.I. for a continuous voters' registration exercise it wants to conduct for the 2024 Election.
Read full articleHe alleged that the true intention of the EC is to prepare a new voters’ register which requires only the Ghana Card as the primary document needed for registration and not the continuous registration for new voters the commission is currently claiming.
Asiedu Nketia, who made these remarks in a Citi TV interview monitored by GhanaWeb, intimated that the move by the EC will only end up disenfranchising eligible Ghanaian voters because a lot of them do not have the Ghana Card.
He added that if the EC thinks the National Identification Authority (NIA) can issue the over 3 million Ghanaians of voting age who do not the Ghana Card with their cards before the end of the year then it should wait till the end of the year before presenting it draft C.I. to Parliament for approval.
"If by their own reckoning the NIA will finish clearing all the backlog by the end of the year then you better wait till the end of the year to pass the law and you still have two years to do your continuous registration.
"There is everything to suspect that they are not releasing the information that we need to know. They have a hidden agenda.
"Because this C.I. is talking about the law concerning only continuous registration. There is no different law for continuous registration and a different law backing the register. Immediately the proposed C.I. is passed, the existing C.I. will have no legal backing,” he said.
Meanwhile, the EC has stated that the guarantor system will no longer be used for the registration of voters in Ghana because it has a lot of issues that affect the quality of the electoral register, citinewsroom.com reports.
Deputy Chairman of the commission in charge of operations, Samuel Tettey, who disclosed this, said that his outfit would only be using the Ghana Card for the next voters' registration.
He added that no Ghanaian would be disenfranchised because persons who do not have the voter's card can go to the district offices of the commission to get registered anytime they get the Ghana Card.
The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has welcomed the decision of the Electoral Commission of Ghana to abolish the guarantor system and the use of only the Ghana Card for the upcoming continuous voters' registration for the 2024 election.
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