By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 22, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]
Following his parliamentary primary reelection in the Ketu-South Constituency in the Volta Region, on the ticket of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), several weeks ago, Mr. Fiifi Kwetey was widely reported to have promised President John Dramani Mahama some 100,000 votes in the November general election (See “Fifi Kwetey Promises Over 100,000 Votes for Mahama in Ketu-South” MyJoyOnline 12/30/15).
The key operatives of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), in particular Communications Director Nana Akomea, ought to be asking several serious questions. Clearly, something does not add up here, especially when one reckons the fact that according to the country’s Fourth-Republican Constitution, the maximum number of registrants or citizens allowed any Member of Parliament (MP) is 50,000 and not the 100,000 that the outgoing Minister of Agriculture is talking about.
In other words, about the only way by which Mr. Kwetey could deliver 100,000 votes in favor of President Mahama would be if the former occupied two separate parliamentary seats as of this writing. He may well have said what has been widely attributed to him by the media purely out of the euphoria of having reportedly won about 85-percent of the votes of the party delegates who cast their ballots in the most recent Ketu-South parliamentary primary, which had been delayed by some legal issues that needed to be ironed.
We are also talking about a constituency whose National Democratic Congress’ operatives have been widely alleged to have packed its Voters’ Register with nearly 80,000 Togolese citizens. Now the latter number, according to the 1992 Republican Constitution, warrants that Ketu-South be split into two electoral districts or constituencies, if Team Bawumia is to be taken at its word. But, of course, Team Bawumia’s argument is quite the opposite, which is that the Ketu-South Voters’ Register, going by the laid-down tenets of the country’s Constitution, is illegally and unconstitutionally bloated. The Electoral Commission (EC), staunchly backed by the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, has hotly disputed Team Bawumia’s argument.
On the bloated Ketu-South Voters’ Register, the patently lame argument has been advanced that the alleged culprits are dual citizens who, by parental nationalities or descent, are entitled to holding both Ghanaian and Togolese national identities. That may well be the case; but the fact still stands that voting rights go with certain legal obligations and responsibilities, such as temporal residency or the length of time that a prospective voter has been living in the constituency in which they intend to vote, prior to the scheduled date of the election in which they intend to cast their vote.
And if they happen not to be school-attending adults, the question that ought to engage our attention is their employment status, particularly the question of whether they are up-to-date with the payment of their tax obligations. In sum, voting is not a facile question of mere nationality or dual citizenship; it is also a question of citizenship responsibilities and obligations.
It well appears that these are some of the critical questions and issues that both the Electoral Commission and the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) ought to be focused on. The interested parties, in particular the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party, and the leadership of the other minority parties, in general, ought to have a foolproof verification system in place in each and every constituency in the country in order to ensure that the people are not criminally taken for a ride.
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